


oh it's a beautiful wedding (What A Shame)

by ang3lba3, Mellomailbox



Series: Polycule? More like poly COOL [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, Ed Swears, Ed feels like he did even tho Winry gave consent, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Granny Pinako smokes weed, Heavy Petting, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Jealousy, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Relationship Negotiation, Teen Pregnancy, They're 19, Wedding Night, Weddings, they haven't really talked about it, they're new at this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:28:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22534756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ang3lba3/pseuds/ang3lba3, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellomailbox/pseuds/Mellomailbox
Summary: A few years after the Promised Day, life has settled into a dull hum of predictability: screaming matches, frequent sex, awful teasing, and the Elrics and Rockbells all crammed under one roof. After a surprise pregnancy prompts the topic of commitment, Winry and Ed try and figure out what a lifetime of commitment  means forthem.One painful step towards happiness at a time.Featuring: three distant Drachman relatives, Crimelord of Amestris Granny Pinako, relentless relationship negotations, and the bride's groom's whore... Roy Mustang.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang, Edward Elric/Winry Rockbell
Series: Polycule? More like poly COOL [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1578928
Comments: 21
Kudos: 73





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> FINALLY!!!! Special thanks to Kotosk and Silentwalrus1 for giving us Drachman references. Obligatory gushing about how wonderful it is to work with our cowriter. This is the first Core installment in the poly series - if you've read other works, you've seen the wedding referenced, or the reception. this is it >:3 strap in!

They decide to get married on a Thursday afternoon. 

The horrible fight happens Thursday morning.

***

“I’m NOT peeing on anything YOUR alchemy made!” Winry screams. 

Al is starting to wish he didn’t have ears. People who don’t have ears don’t have to listen to their brother and their brother’s girlfriend having the weirdest grossest fights.

“Michaela is a quack! We can’t even know for sure—”

“I’m a medical doctor!  _ I _ know for sure! And YOU don’t know how to—”

“How hard can it be! Not hard at all but too hard for her, apparently, because there’s no way that you could be, when we—”

“OBVIOUSLY THERE IS A WAY, ED.”

Al starts to piece together a narrative, entirely against his will. Winry peed on something the pharmacist gave her and got a...certain result… and Ed’s not taking it well…

“Oh no,” he whispers, unsure if he’s mortified or excited or terrified. All three. Definitely all three. Winry and Ed? Having a— 

“I’M NOT BELIEVING YOU UNTIL YOU PEE ON  _ MY _ ARRAY.”

“I’m gonna be a fun uncle,” Al says to himself. 

“I ONLY HAVE SO MUCH PEE!”

“I GOT YOU WATER! DRINK THE WATER!”

“HOW CAN I DRINK THE WATER, WHEN I’M TRYING TO  _ KILL YOU!” _

“Don’t get too excited, now,” Granny says. Al looks up sharply. He’d actually forgotten she was on the porch with him for a moment. “Michaela’s pregnancy tests aren’t what they used to be before her arthritis.”

“Should we tell Winry?”

Granny puffed on her pipe. “You can go tell her.”

Al smiles evilly. “I’d love to.” 

***

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Ed says. That’s all he’s  _ been _ saying, and Winry’s getting kind of sick of it. 

“Aren’t you an  _ atheist?” _ Winry asks testily. “Stop begging something holy to help you and say something already! I didn’t pee on your five stupid tests for you to just—”

“Hnnngh,” Ed says. He doesn’t run to the bathroom, because they’re already in it. He does heave over the toilet for a second like he’s going to throw up, though, which makes Winry white knuckle the edge of the sink. “I’m nineteen,” he whines.

“Edward Elric I swear to  _ fucking  _ god--”   
  
“--Aren’t  _ you  _ an atheist,” he counters. “Upheaval after betra—”   


“--I  _ swear  _ to  _ god  _ that if you make this about  _ you  _ I will finish what GOD HIMSELF started, and then some  _ extra— _ ”

“You’ll. Rip my other limbs off?”

Winry shoves him against the tub hard enough his metal shoulder sings on the impact. He’d been balancing on the balls of his feet and goes flailing.    
  
“You’ll wish that’s all,” she seethes, yanking up her underwear and storming out with her shorts still on the tile. She stomps towards the porch, face red and teeth grinding, the old peeled wood  _ never  _ without its usual inhabitants of immortal grandmother and probably immortal little brother.

“Winry,” Al says, happily. Granny just gives her a nod of acknowledgement. Neither of them comment or even seem to notice her lack of pants. Den  _ whuffs _ at her from his place at Granny’s feet. 

“No,” she snaps, and Al’s grin doesn’t falter as she storms past and into the yard. 

“I think Alphonse is a lovely name!” Al calls after her. “Just you know! As a name! It’s real great!”

“Shut the fuck up, Al,” Ed says, and Winry walks faster.

Among the detritus in the front yard that marks the house as one belonging to a mechanic Winry finds an open toolbox and reaches for a wrench. Ed freezes, balanced comically badly with his automail foot midstep, but she ignores him. Instead she kneels bare-kneed into the dirt and starts savagely taking apart the engine in front of her. It’s not even a current project, just what happened to be within her reach first.    
  
Winry curses as her fingers catch on a sharp bit, slicing open the pad of her thumb and ignoring it as she bends forward and works harder. Her hair’s a tangled mess over her shoulders and face, sleep tank a sharp breeze away from displaying her bare chest to the countryside. Her stomach growls, reminding her that she hasn’t eaten yet and upchucked whatever she had yesterday upon waking.    
  
Ed can clean those fucking sheets, the whiny-ass baby. 

Ed stays well back. This is a smart move, because she’s pretty sure if he got within range she’d start taking apart his limbs. He doesn’t  _ deserve _ an arm and a leg right now. And yes he paid for them and she’s his doctor so she can’t actually take them off just because he’s being a total— dingus— shit— fuck—

_ “Cunt face!”  _ Winry screeches, and just starts beating at the ground with the wrench. The shock of it travels through her wrist, up her arm. She’s gonna regret it later. Better make it worth it now, then. “Mother PUS BUCKET! Cock DICK ass SHIT  _ FUCK! _ ” 

She stops, breathing heavy, bent over. The world is very silent, but not silent at all, in the way it usually is in the countryside. She can hear Ed just. Fucking standing there. Waiting. Trying to figure out what to say.

“...how’s it hanging?” he finally settles on, in a moment of near lyrical brilliance that really highlights why she ever let him in her pants in the first place. Yep. Father of her child.  _ How’s it hanging.  _ Al’s laughing from the peanut gallery. 

Her thumb is actually aching, and she shouldn’t be like, introducing bacteria to her bloodstream or anything with the-- the, the  _ baby _ , oh. Shit. Oh SHIT. Winry shoves her thumb in her mouth and blinks a few times, trying to force back the tears before they scare Ed off even more, the  _ chickenshit _ .    
  
“You’re chickenshit,” she mutters.    
  
“C’mon, I know you know better than me how much bacteria there is in the human mouth,” he says. It’s strained, but it’s close to a joke. Close enough. That was something she’d say to him, a lot. One of the first Neat Medical Facts!!! she learned. It usually ended with him licking every cut he could reach, on him or her or Al or  _ Den _ .   
  
Ed’s got his hands on hers, metal thumb pressed to the cut to staunch the bleeding. He’s too close; she can smell him, his brand of oil and the way the dirt of the countryside clings to the crease in his elbow and the spot behind his ear that she likes to kiss, mixing with his sweat. She glances up and can see the blush of freckles over the bridge of his nose. They only show up when he’s in the sun a lot. 

“I want it,” Winry says. She doesn’t look at him, instead watching their hands. His face isn’t the only place that freckles. His entire body is tanned, freckles everywhere. Little constellations. There’s one on his wrist and down his forearm that almost looks like a Y when you connect it. Ed insists it looks more like a fish, but Winry’s not any good at picturing what’s not there. There’s no fish on his arm. There’s just a big old Y.   
  
“You can’t-- It’s not really that big of a surprise. I mean, it’s always been us. We always knew we--maybe not we. Um,” she runs her thumb over Ed’s automail knuckles, picking at the screws the way she always yells at him not to. “ _ I  _ always knew we’d end up here. Not this soon, probably, but,” and she pulls her hands away and leans back on her heels, palms cupping her belly.    
  
Winry keeps her eyes down and chews her lips. “I’m gonna make an appointment with Lana Mayfield to confirm, and then I’m gonna stop by the pharmacist to get some supplements. Then I’m gonna call Paninya and Sheska, and they’re gonna come visit and we’re gonna work out a plan.” She glances up, a flash of blue before she looks down again, trained on loose nails and patches of weeds.    
  
“You like planning. You could, you could come too. To help, you know, keep us organized.” 

Ed’s silent. For a. Really,  _ really _ long time. And she kinda — after his reaction, she knew he didn’t want — but to not even say yes to… planning. To. Being there  _ some. _ It was okay if they didn’t survive this, because Winry would survive anything. But.  _ But. _

“I’m not—um. Where are Paninya and Sheska gonna sleep? All the rooms are kinda full. Should I move my stuff out of the spare? Into yours? Or in with Al’s? I kick at night, and if you’re gonna… if you’re, we’re, gonna. Pregnant. Then like, I really should not be kicking you, or waking you up with nightmares?” Ed pauses. “Sheska? Really? Is she like. A baby guru? A fetus whisperer? Why is this the first time I’m hearing about this?” 

“You’re not funny,” Winry says for probably the thousandth time. She’s having trouble processing what he’s saying, and it’s easy to pick apart the familiar. 

“And you’re pregnart, so I--bregnant. Pregnarant. FUCK.” Ed snatches his hands back, and there’s the familiar sound of him hiding his face in them. It’s a bit harder sounding than usual.

_ That  _ gets a startled laugh out of her, and she peers at him to see if he’s fucking with her or genuinely malfunctioning. “What? Seriously, what?” 

“Baby,” Ed says weakly. It’s not a pet name. Genuine malfunction. He takes a deep breath, blows it out. It makes a whistling sound where it blows quickly through some of the joints in the automail. “I’m sorry I freaked out. I’m not. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“You’re what,” Winry blinks. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m onLy nInEteEn. My name is EDWARD ELRIC and I’m NINETEEN and I never learned how to fucking APOLOGIIIIIIZE,” his voice twists into a mocking whiny pitch, and he finally drops his hands. “You can make fun of me, I deserve it, c’mon. I chased you around for half an hour trying to make you pee on my arrays then I had a shitfit when you did, let me have it.”   
  
“I hate you,” she tells him, but she’s laughing weakly and grabs at his cheek. He tries to dodge but she hooks a finger in his mouth to really pinch him good and pulls him close, expression flattening out. His eyes skitter back and forth, waiting for her to say something. She lets him stew in it for a while.    
  
“ _ I’m _ only nineteen,” she finally says, nasally, and then she crosses her eyes and shoves him backwards. 

Al  _ howls _ with laughter on the porch. “I’m only  _ NINETEEEEEEEEN!” _

Winry gets into it, smiling shakily “Look at me, Edward Elric, Fullmetal Bitch Alchemist. I did impossible alchemy at 10! I joined the military at 12! I punched god at 16!” She shoves her nose up with one of her fingers, giving herself a pig snout to really get the whine going. 

Al pops in on cue. “I’m only noooooiiiiiiineTEEN!”   
  
Ed lays on the ground where he fell, arms flung out dramatically, legs akimbo, twitching occasionally like he’s been shocked. “And if you don’t pee on my doodles I’ll cry!”

Winry starts giggling in earnest. He had gotten kind of teary at the end there, waving the water bottle at her. 

Ed’s drawing something in the dirt now, head turned and hair tipped all over the gravel and debris. Al starts hopping excitedly from the porch, his feet making little  _ thump thump _ that quickly gain the harmony of  _ thu-thu-thu-thu  _ of Den’s excited parroting. 

There’s the bright blue splash-crackle of transmutation, but Winry can’t see what it is. A metal Ed? Maybe? Ed swings himself up from his back, the product of the transmutation tucked safely away in his palm. He pulls himself to his knees, matches Winry and how she’s sat across from him. She’s a little taller than him like this. She sits up a little straighter just to dig that in, and he slouches a little, to let her. 

Fuck. Fuck. She loves him a lot. Sometimes.

“I made you something,” Ed says, and outstretches his automail hand. Whatever it is is cupped inside. He shakes it a bit, like how a kid would with a Yuletide present, and it rattles. Metal for sure, then.

“Oh my god,” she says, and Ed’s about to make the atheist joke  _ again--  _ she can  _ feel it _ \-- so she smacks a palm on his mouth to shut it up. She’s grinning, so he takes the cue she gives him, licking her palm to make her let go. She’s tougher than him and grips his face harder. 

“Let the nineteen year old speak!” Al calls from the porch. 

“No!” Winry calls back. “He’s too stupid! I’ll have to hear what his stupid mouth wants to say and then I’ll have to dig a screwdriver into my ear to get rid of it.” Ed’s still licking her hand. He’s kinda sucking at the palm now in a very distracting way. 

“Winry! Think of the baby! The baby’s ears! They’re already going to come out pierced a billion times!”

Oh, no. Now that Al’s said it she  _ is  _ thinking of it. Not what he said, what he said is stupid, but about...the baby.

She’s having a kid with Ed Elric. There’s going to be a being in the world that’s influenced by  _ Alphonse Elric.  _ He’s younger than her and Ed, what havoc will he wreak on a creature he’s known from birth? Will it look like them? Or her? Ed had explained their Xerxian heritage, and she wonders how strong those genes are. They don’t look like Trisha at all.    
  
Ed must notice how her mood has changed. He takes her wrist delicately and pulls it away from his face, a nervous tilt to his mouth. It’s slick with spit, from trying to get her off of him. It’s horribly distracting. He places a ring in her palm without looking and closes her fingers over it.    
  
“I don’t want to ruin you,” she says a little frantically. Ed makes this incredulous little snort, but doesn’t interrupt her. “But also I don’t want to let you go. I mean, you’re sorta complicit in this, and. Hm.” Winry frowns, working the metal between her fingers, still not looking. Schrodinger's ring.    
  
“I know your Dad messed you up, and this is gonna be shitty but you’re not so unlike him in the way you disappeared on us when you were getting Al back. I don’t hold it against you or anything, you’re, you’ve been here for a while, cause I mean. I guess you had to, with Al being sick, and, we, you, we kinda just, you and me,” and now her lip is trembling and Ed’s got that look in his eyes,  _ fuck.  _

Ed opens his mouth and Winry shakes her head, barreling on a little louder. “Shut up, let me get through this.”    
  
Ed’s mouth snaps shut.    
  
“I know you, Ed. You’re awful and I know you, I know you’ve been waiting to get called into Central or sniff out a fight or, I don’t know, let the universe pull you into another adventure. You and Al have been talking about visiting Xing together and I won’t take that from you, you’ll  _ hate  _ me and end up leaving.” 

Or worse,  _ staying _ . She doesn’t say that out loud even as she thinks it, sucking in a shaky breath, fat tears coursing over her cheeks and collecting under her chin. She’s been thinking about this for months, worrying it around, rubbing at the sharp edges till they’re smooth. She’s always been grateful to have even a partial ownership to the golden idols that are the Elrics. It’s the best kind of bait, for an atheist. She’s been downright ecstatic, smug, boastful,  _ gluttonous _ about it. But.    
  
“You deserve to be happy. I can, I can be happy too. We did it before. You can have your adventures, and sure as shit I’m gonna have mine, and I’ll have a kid with me now but that’s. I can-- it’ll be fun. But what I  _ can’t  _ do is marry you out of something as stupid as obligation. So--” 

“Can I say something yet?” Ed asks. “May I say something?”

Winry nods, not really trusting herself to speak without. Well. Speaking and speaking and speaking.

“Okay then, a couple of things. Uh, let's say four things, I think there’s more, but I’ve absolutely forgotten some so I’ll just count off four and see where we’re at.  _ First thing,” _ and his eyes are gleaming with, like, well, early morning sunlight, but also some kind of emotion she can’t parse. A  _ lot _ of some kind of emotion. 

“You cannot and never will ruin me because you expect me to be better than I am. I’m not—I don’t know who told you that I was a  _ good person, _ but I know it  _ sure as fuck _ wasn’t me. And I would know! I spend all the time with me! You can’t, that’s just, stupid. You’re super smart and I guess I rubbed off on you what with like, my DNA growing in your body,”-- Winry makes a face, cause  _ imagery _ ,-- “ but that’s no excuse. I suck, and you can’t ruin me because you, you and Al, you’re only ever asking me to be better. So shut up about that.” 

He blows out a deep breath. Looks down at his hands, where he has one finger up on both of them. He flips a second finger up. “Second thing. Hohenheim did mess me up. And the way I acted back then, the way I treated you and Granny for daring to care whether I lived or died, was fucked up. I don’t think I ever said that out loud, but I’ve been— I thought you could tell. I guess. That I was trying to make it up to you guys. But there’s a, a, a, distinct difference. Okay? And that’s that. My dad left home so he could find a way to die when he came back. I left home so I could find a way to live. If Al had ever, had ever asked me to stop, I wouldn’t’ve. I couldn’t. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t be fully alive while he wasn’t. And that’s.”

He squints, staring off into the distance. “That’s really bad and I have to work on living for more people, and I promise I’m trying.” 

Winry’s shaking now, full body shudders that have her teeth chattering in her jaw where she’s got it jutted out in an attempt at a brave face. She wraps her arms tighter around herself, a sob breaking through her lips. Fuck him. Since when can he be, fuck, emotionally aware?    
  
“You never said,” she gets out, wanting to drive the guilt home a little, since he’s being honest. Might as well get the hits in while she can, since he’s shredding her heart with his words. 

“That’s cuz saying  _ sucks, _ ” Ed sighs. His face is red and blotchy, the way it is when he’s fighting back tears. He’s cried in front of her a lot. She’s crying literally right now. Al’s crying. Granny’s, well, Winry doesn’t think Granny has tear ducts? She’s pretty sure she had them surgically removed. But Granny  _ could _ be crying. Even Den is whimpering. But not Ed. No. Big strong man him, no emotion water from eyes. 

Winry leans in and pinches his flesh arm hard right in the soft spot where elbow turns into bicep. 

It shocks the tears out, and he flails and shrieks, forgetting to tense his facial muscles.

“ _ Cry _ , asshole,” she hisses. 

“You said you’d cry all my tears for me!” Ed protests, snorting in air through his nose desperately and holding his breath in waves to try and stop them. It’s no use.

“Until you came HOME!” she wails, eyes going wide and shocked and hands slapping over her face to hide the now rapid onslaught. 

“Well then I GUESS I’LL JUST CRY!” Ed yells. “Cuz I’M HOME and I’m not GOING ANYWHERE, you wretched wrench wench—”

“ _ Fucking bastard fish breath pea sized trash asshole, _ ” she yells, diving headfirst into his chest and slinging her arms around him. 

“POINT THE THIRD,” Ed yells at full volume, hugging her closely. Then he stops. Winry can almost hear him replaying everything she’d said, probably with terrible commentary. “Point. Third. Is…. you brought up my dad then you were like— right. Travel. Okay. So. I don’t have a plan. Yet. But I don’t… okay nope, no lying, yeah, I need to travel. But I’m not going anywhere without an itinerary signed and dated by you, and I’ll remember to write if I have to tattoo it on my hand—”

“You’re lying,” Winry says into his neck, garbled and a little snotty. She rubs her nose more firmly to itch it, smearing more along his shoulder. 

“I’ll  _ get the tattoo, _ ” Ed insists. “I’m pretty sure even I can’t forget something tattooed on. Probably. If I get it on my forehead people will bring it up a lot, so maybe that’s better? Shit. I will forget if it’s on my hand, you’re right. What body part—”

“ED,” she wails, hitting him in the back with her fists a little. He hugs so well, it’s always so nice and warm and comforting to be wrapped in his (fine, big) arms and warmth, the firm line of his automail a support that makes her feel. Safe, probably. Something along the lines of protected. They’ve all gotten so much more physical since Al came back, making up for lost time. 

“Get it on your penis,” Al suggests supportively.

“I don’t look at that enough!” Ed says back, as if it was an option if he  _ did. _

Winry doesn’t even need to look to launch a piece of carburetor at Al, sniffling a little in satisfaction as he yelps.    
  
“ _ Ed, _ ” she stresses, refusing to pull her face out of the comforting warmth of his neck. She’ll probably just, live here now. Face to neck. Ed can wrap her up in one of those baby holster things, carry her around so he can do clap alchemy still.    
  
“Stop making promises you can’t keep, Ed. It’s not fair.” 

“I don’t,” Ed starts. “Winry, I don’t know what I can promise you besides my intention to... make us work. I’m not going to be good at it. You’re also not going to be good at it. But we’re the two smartest people in Amestris, unborn baby and living baby over on the porch aside, and if we can’t figure it out then no one can. And  _ plenty _ of people figure out how to— we don’t have to get  _ married. _ I just. I don’t know how to show you how serious I am. And if something happens to me… I want… I have a pension. A damn good one. So. It’s easier if you’re my wife.”

They sit in silence for a long time. Long enough that Winry can think about all the stuff they just launched into the world with their mouths, long enough for Den and Granny to shuffle inside. Long enough that her favorite spot against the side of Ed’s neck becomes tacky and thick from mucus and tears, and her eyelashes are burning her face from the salt. She finally leans back, pulling up the hem of her shirt to wipe at her face and flashing Ed dead on in the process. The fucker doesn’t even try to make a grab or a joke, they’ve been pregnant for like an hour and he’s suddenly  _ mature _ ? 

“I also really wanna design a wedding cake,” Ed adds, entirely seriously. “I was thinking maybe doughnuts and cupcakes? Somehow? And brownies. And danishes. And also lemon meringue and—”

“Oh my god,” Winry says again, voice raw and nasally from actual snot and crying instead of mocking Ed. “It would be so awesome to say I own all of you and not just your automail.” 

Ed chokes on his own spit in a very appealing way. It shouldn’t be appealing. That’s part of his counterintuitive charm, that he looks so appealing when he’s deeply unattractive by any reasonable metric. Al starts singing,  _ lalalalalalala, _ from the porch.

“Y-yes,” Ed says, his voice cracking. Winry grins victoriously, because those cracks are getting fewer and farther apart but she can still drag them out of him. He’d be hers. Cracks and all.

“I’m starving,” she decides, slipping the ring on as she stands, still not looking at it. Her eyes flick down, hot, to be sure Ed gets the innuendo. Her sight lands on the ring as she does, and she freezes up just a bit when she sees what he’s done. It’s— it’s perfectly nice. It’s got a little briar rose, where the gem would be if it was a real ring and not something made from steel scraps. “Oh.”

“You liiiiike it,” Ed teases, recovering from her flirting faster every day. Winry shoves him over with the side of her foot and storms onto the porch, blushing furiously. 

“Those roses had  _ thorns _ and this ring better not give me  _ tetanus, _ ” she mutters. She’s trying very hard not to think about his first marriage proposal, or at least, the first she remembers. She thinks she’d agreed to marry Al that time, because Al had helped clean out the cuts on her fingers from the bouquet of briar roses and Ed had been crying uselessly over hurting her. Al hadn’t agreed to marry her back, but that was irrelevant. She’d invoked the law of dibs, on both of them. 

“Do you want eggs? Pancakes? Waffles? Meat? Hey, are you getting weird cravings yet? When do I get to see you eat something like,  _ really really gross, _ and take pictures of it and pull them out whenever you try and tell me not to put hummus on my hot dogs? Is that like in the fifth trimester? Wait. Not. Trimester. There’s only two of them, obviously… wait, no, that’s wrong too. AL, WHAT NUMBER IS TRI AGAIN?”

“I want you to,” she starts, and stops. Ah, fuck, might as well. “I want. You.” Winry blushes red, whips around and flees into the house before anyone can tease her.

Ed turns equally red, frozen for a moment. “NEVER MIND, AL!”

“I’m like right here. You don’t have to yell so loud,” Al complains, as they leave him in their dust. “And it’s three. Tri is three.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Or at least it used to be three,” Al muses to himself, deeply, soulfully. 
> 
> Granny dumps her pipe ash out on his pant leg. 
> 
> “Hey!” 
> 
> “Either get yourself an idiot or stop complaining that those idiots finally decided to be a bit smarter about things,” Granny says. “Hand me my ‘tobacco’.”
> 
> There’s the weird emphasis she always puts on the word, but Al dutifully pulls the baggie of green leaves from her sock and hands it to her anyways. As she packs her bowl, he thinks. Find his own idiot. Well. Ed’s not gonna go to Xing. But… he bets there’s lots of idiots in Xing. It’s the country Ling is from, after all. And there’s no law that says he can only travel with his brother. 
> 
> Yeah. Xing. Before the wedding.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the beginning of this chapter, Ed receives a letter. The relevant letter can be read in this fic, as the first half of [Chapter Two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21926029/chapters/52373086#workskin). I do recommend starting with [Chapter One](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21926029/chapters/52332898), if you wanna know everything. If you want to avoid spoilers for this fic, stop after Roy's letter ends in Chapter Two.
> 
> It's not absolutely necessary to read the letter to be able to understand the fic, but it's there if you want it!

He gets the letter less than a month before the wedding. He reads it all at once, then reads it again, committing it to memory. Then he buries it in the backyard, and tries to bury the memory with it. It’s a habit of his, burying sins in backyards. 

***

They’re in bed when his sins come crawling through his throat and out of his mouth, desperate for freedom. Winry’s tinkering with his palm, tiny screwdriver she keeps in the bedside table between her fingers and bottom lip between her teeth. Ed has a book in his other hand, sent to him by-- 

The other bane of his existence. The worse one. 

“I sent Mustang his invites.” Ed turns a page. He’s not sure what happened on the last _10_ pages but he’s not going to go back now.

Winry hums and presses her finger against a wire near the base of his thumb. He doesn’t feel it in his nerves but his thumb twitches and she frowns deeper. 

He should be saying more. He should be saying: _I sent Mustang a dare and he wrote me a really fucking romantically charged letter and I liked it. I just wanted him to turn me down or ignore me, but he didn’t, and now I’m all fucked up over it._

He also really shouldn’t be saying that, because Winry has— stupid ideas. Like that he’s only marrying her because it’s convenient. Or because they called dibs. And maybe he is, but it’s not like he doesn’t love her. And they have sex, like, all the time. They have so much sex they’re having a _baby._ So he must be capable of loving her right. He just has to try harder. Stop fucking it up so bad.

“You keep thinking that hard and you’ll fry the wiring to your brain,” Winry mumbles, pressing the panelling to make his thumb wiggle around in a truly unnatural way. There’s a sharp pain and she makes a triumphant sound. “You felt that?” 

“That’s a _good_ thing?” Ed asks incredulously.

She looks at him now, face a little rounder and eyes a little brighter as the pregnancy makes her body into something new. He doesn’t want to say it’s making her look more like a baby, but she’s all youthful and adorable and round and often crying. She pukes up her food. But her boobs are also bigger, and he wants to have sex with her all the time. There’s no good analogy here. Al says she’s ‘glowing’, but that doesn’t mean anything. Her grin is dangerous, pointy and sharp in her soft face. “Yeah. If I can increase your sensitivity then you’ll be able to finger me with the automail hand.” 

Ed chokes. “Uh. Win. It’s not--it’s metal. With seams.”

Her grin doesn’t falter. “Yep. I know, I made it.” She pushes the panel again, the weird electrical shock sparking down his palm and up his arm. 

“Is that...safe?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Winry says dismissively. She’s moving on to his other fingers now. “Worry about what hobby you’re going to take up to build dexterity.” 

“Hobby?” Ed asks blankly. “I assumed my new hobby was going to be fingering you all the time.”

“That’s your _job,”_ Winry says. “And I’ll let you know when you’re on duty. But picking up something like bead stringing or—”

“Bead stringing?” Ed asks, and his vision swims for a moment. “That’s. How dexterous am I gonna _be?_ I can’t even _write_ right now.”

“That’s up to you,” Winry decides, shutting the metal plate that protects the delicate insides of his palm. She screws it shut and buffs out some of the screwdriver’s scratches with some spit on her thumb. “Who am I, your doctor?”

“You know,” Ed says, instead of answering that. “I never really believed that whole thing about how everything amazing in history happened because someone just wanted to have sex. Because I’ve invented lots of things and maybe only a third of them are sex related, and that’s usually cuz you had a really—”

“The next word out of your mouth better be amazing,” Winry threatens.

“--really amazing idea. But I think this has convinced me. Human invention is run on horniness.” 

“Human invention is run on _desperation,”_ Winry corrects. She puts away the screwdriver and shifts around, turning to face him fully. She’s taken to only wearing a t-shirt to bed, like she used to do when she was younger, only now it’s more indecent than adorable. She bats her eyelashes, really hamming it up when she puckers her lips and leans in, palm flat against the pages of his book the way he hates. 

“And you’re just _so_ desperate for me,” Ed says, rolling his eyes at the concept. 

“Yeah. Your terrible self esteem is a real turn on,” she purrs, smashing their lips together as Ed’s still talking just to make him laugh. She doesn’t do any of the things you have to do for a real kill-- kiss. For a real _kiss._ Instead she’s just, like, rubbing their mouths together and crawling further into his space. 

“That’s because you’re an opportunity predator,” Ed accuses, but puts his hands obligingly on whatever’s nearest to try and help her balance. 

“If you don’t like it, don’t make yourself such an _easy_ opportunity,” Winry says. She settles on his lap, knees on either side of his hips and fingers in his hair where it’s hanging loose over his shoulders for bed. She cards her fingers through it and watches him, too close in the way Ed can unfocus his eyes and she’ll go blurry. 

“What’s eating you,” she asks, finger tracing the shell of his ear. If she was _really_ trying to start something she’d be doing the thing with her hips where she wiggles them until his eyes go crossed. She’s still, though, just close to him in the way they’ve all gotten a little excessive with lately. Ed can’t say he minds, palms settled on her rounded hips. 

“Um,” Ed says. “I dunno. It’s stupid.”

“I like stupid,” Winry says, squeezing his chin pointedly. “Come on.”

“Uh,” Ed says. “Okay. Fine. You— don’t laugh at me so hard you fall off the bed. But. It’s… Mustang.”

*** 

“Oh,” Winry says, voice gone flat. She lets go of his chin and leans back a little, needing to get a good look at the guilt where it settles along the line of his mouth familiarly. “You’re-- you’re re-enlisting.”

It makes sense, even as the disappointment settles deep in her chest like the worst kind of heartburn. She’d _told_ him. She _knew_ that he couldn’t let it go, that he couldn’t abandon them after everything they went through. And she doesn’t blame him! She doesn’t! What they’re doing, what _Ed_ is going to do (has done, always does) is _good._ It’s good. He’s good, and the world needs-- good. 

But. These last few months have been good for _her._

“No— not! Not that. Freelance contracts or _nothing,_ I’m not getting caught in that again. It’s. Stupider,” Ed blows out a big breath. 

“Uh. So… you know I… or I haven’t said but.. I thought maybe you’d have noticed… that I… tend to have a... a type. Mean annoying people who threaten me a lot. Emphasis on you know, _people._ ”

Winry blinks, and blinks, and stares. “You’re,” she starts, and can’t form the words in her head, let alone in her mouth. “You’re not leaving me for the military?” 

“No!” Ed says. “No! I’m. Uh. I’m kinda. It just. I kind of made a joke about— and— I just wanted Roy to turn me down but it got weird and he flirted back and I’m all—”

“Roy?” She asks incredulously, hands gripping his shoulders tightly. Is the bed swaying? Are they swaying?

“Mustang. Colonel Bastard.” 

“Oh my _god,_ ” She realizes. “You _hate_ him. I should have known! You hate me too!” The words are out of her mouth before she can fully process what Ed is actually telling her. His collarbone has become… excessively interesting to her. The way his automail lays across the bone is damn near artistic, if she does say so herself. Which she does. Frequently and at high volume. 

“I hate him _different!”_ Ed says defensively. “And I’ve hated you _longer._ I just wanted to _actually_ hate him. I made a, a, a really stupid joke. And all he had to do was ignore it but instead he— do you wanna read it? I buried it in the yard.”

“You buried it in the _yard,”_ Winry repeats. This is— holy shit. He’s serious. He’s. Somehow serious about this. About ‘Roy’. How did she never see it?

“Wait. Wait. Back up. So you… flirted with… in a letter. To try and like, get it out of your system before our wedding. And he…”

“I made a joke about him liking bumfucking,” Ed mutters. Winry splutters, because that’s a bit on the nose even for Ed, but Ed cuts her off. “It made sense in context!”

“How long,” She asks him, diverting the conversation before it can devolve into teasing and mocking, as they usually do these days. This is serious. They have to stay focused, or they’ll laugh it off and it’ll fester until it rots them both to the core. 

“How long what?” Ed asks. He’s not playing dumb, is the worst part. 

She waves her hand dismissively, “No, I mean, how long have you ‘hated’ him?” She makes air quotes, pouting a little but meeting his eyes. It’s not-- it doesn’t hurt so much as she thought it would, saying it out loud. Winry always knew Ed didn’t belong to her. She just assumed he belonged to Amestris, and yeah-- she sees the irony in that now. In a way she guesses this still means the same thing. 

“Um,” Ed says, and he gets that flush on his cheekbones, the one he gets when he talks about. Her. Hm, there’s the pain. “Um. I don’t… he kind of just. Do I have to say it? It’s bad. It’s really bad.”

“Yes! Now you absolutely have to say it, oh my god!”

“Like right away! I didn’t— I was ten! But he picked me up and screamed at me and I wanted to kill him, and then I just kept wanting to kill him, and it’s, I dunno! Hating people is weird! My wires are all. Crossed. Up there.” Ed rubs at his face. “I don’t know how to… I wanna fight someone and it’s usually around the time I start realizing I wanna lose that I know I _don’t_ want to _just_ fight them. You know.”

Winry climbs off of Ed’s lap and settles back against her pillows, back against the headboard and hands shoved between her thighs. His wires are crossed, ok, but does that mean they’re crossed for her too? She furrows her brows and focuses on breathing through her nose. The pressure is still there, in her sternum, and at this point she can’t even tell if it’s hurt or anger. She wants to hit him. She wants to slam his face into the wall and _scream._

Ok. Anger. 

“I gotta like, take a walk,” she says, sliding out of bed.

“I-” Ed cuts himself off, and Winry realizes her shoulders had hunched up, her fists clenched, that she’d half turned on him already.

He doesn’t say anything else.

She leaves.

She walks as far as she’s comfortable going this late at night on only a t-shirt and then she screams into her palms. She grabs whatever she can find and throws it, and then takes a shovel laying rusted against a tree and starts bashing the tree with it until it slips from her hands. She’s huffing and sweating and shaking, but she’s not. Crying. 

Ok. Winry takes a few deep breaths, imagining screaming at Ed and punching him in the mouth. That riles her back up, _you’re mine you’re mine you’re MINE_ until she has to keep walking and finds herself back at the house.

Winry doesn’t... _share_ well. She wasn’t taught to share, only child to two doctors, and then the only living relative of Pinako Rockbell. She didn’t ever _need_ to share. It was something she did because she wanted to, because she wanted friends who were hers because they wanted to be, because she was _greedy greedy greedy_ and she couldn’t stand the thought that love could be bought. She had to _earn it._ Ambitious and prideful and greedy and so, so, so wrathful.

Ed and Al have always been hers. She called dibs, and dibs means for life. No take backsies. The only thing that could get her through the loneliness of her teens was knowing that these amazing boys were _hers_ and all she had to do was be a little patient and share them for a bit longer and not tear them apart during the interim with her temper and impatience. 

Winry is so tired of sharing. 

But they’re not really hers if they don’t want to be hers. Then they’re someone else’s. And if Ed. If Ed wants to be someone else’s. And if Ed doesn’t _choose her back,_ doesn’t _pick dibs back_. Then _it doesn’t count._

She can own him, body and soul, power of attorney and joint bank account and two out of four of his limbs and it won’t matter, because she won’t really own him. Because he didn’t give himself to her. 

Winry leans against the post that displays _Rockbell Automail_ , arms crossed as she watches the yellow square where Ed’s still waiting for her in her bedroom window. If she stops being so angry and really lets herself think about it… sharing hasn’t been that bad. The two of them are honestly getting a bit stir crazy being together so much, and she already knew he wasn’t really going to stay, not for good. Not always. 

She was ok with that. More than ok-- used to it, comfortable, a part of their existence that’s divorced from emotion and instead strictly factual. 

And she can admit that her— _sharing_ issues aren’t entirely logical. Aren’t even entirely what she wants to feel. They’re all hooked up into other things. Neurons wired into emotions wired into sex wired into hate into love. Maybe that’s why Ed and her work. Both wired wrong, both unbalanced atoms. Ed likes it when she holds him down by the wrists, and Winry _likes_ holding him there, and neither of them talk about how it’s not normal to like that. But both of them know. So it’s kind of fucked up of her to demand that he never has any of those feelings about anyone else, when the first time she saw Paninya all she could think about was becoming her mechanic, and she still writes a letter every month advertising the new features she’s come up with. 

Oh. She hasn’t thought about Paninya since-- huh. 

The gears work, and Winry thinks, and she plans, and she re-wires her expectations and has a tentative prototype when she climbs the stairs to her bedroom. 

When she pokes her head in, Ed pokes his head out from under the blankets. His whole face is red, but especially around the eyes. His whole face is also wet, and she recognizes the ‘it’s hot under blankets, I was _sweating’_ defense when she sees it. 

“It’s hot under the blankets, I was sweating,” Ed says quickly. His throat is clogged. 

“Yeah, I know,” she says, and he makes a face, waiting for the barb. She doesn’t give it, instead sliding under the blankets and shoving her dirty, cold feet against his belly where it’s hanging out, Ed’s tank-top perpetually shoved up. He yelps, abs crunching against her feet, and she takes the opportunity to slip right into his space and push him on his back. 

Winry lays on him, chin propped on his chest. She watches him watch her, and he’s struggling to get air through his nose. There’s a shine on the top of his lip. 

“Gross.” She grabs a corner of the blanket and mashes it against Ed’s face. They’re already caked with dirt now ‘cause of her; might as well commit to the dirty country stereotype. 

“I dun belieb you,” Ed says. “You lub it when I cry.”

“It is pretty sexy sometimes,” Winry agrees. His flesh hand lifts to help her rub the blanket over his face, cleaning up what he can. He sniffles. 

Winry turns to lay her cheek against his chest. His heart’s beating rapidly, a staccato rhythm created by Winry. Because he cares. 

“You’re scared,” she tells him, poking at his ribs. He’s warm, every breath lifting her, and she feels her eyes drooping. 

“Yeah, well, I have it on good authority I’m chickenshit,” Ed yawns.

“Oh, that’s rude of me. Sorry, you’re _chickenshit._ I’ll get it right next time.” 

“Good. It’s a diagnosis from my doctor. I got the paperwork if you need it. It’s discrimination to use pejorative terms like scared when I have legal documentation defining it as _chickenshit._ ”

“S’okay,” Winry murmurs. “I trust you.” 

Ed starts crying again, because he’s that kind of easy doofus. It makes his chest loud under her ear.

She kisses his chest and pats at his arm numbly. “Big baby.” 

“You’re the one with a big baby,” Ed sniffles.

Winry pinches him. He whines, pathetically, but doesn’t flinch away. “I’m telling Al you’re calling me fat.”

“I’m calling our _baby_ fat,” Ed protests.

_Our baby._ Winry grins against Ed’s chest and mashes her face more firmly into the damp cotton of his tank to hide it. It’s a thrill every time he says it. _Ours._ Theirs, together. 

“I’ve got a plan,” she tells Ed, and then doesn’t elaborate.

“Please elaborate on that,” Ed says.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says back. “You can trust me. I’m your doctor.”


	3. Chapter 3

The dream goes like this:

 _It saddens me that you equate my last missive to a love letter,_ Roy says. They’re in his office. Ed is sitting on the black leather couch, and Roy is behind his desk. Ed’s legs are on the table in front of him, insolent to an extent he never quite managed to achieve in real life. In real life Hawkeye is there, and she’d break both legs for the daring. 

In this dream, his legs are on the table. Hawkeye is not there. No one is, no one but him and Roy, and he knows this with bone deep certainty. They are utterly alone in the world. No one will know what happens here. 

_Saddens you,_ Ed repeats. He feels relieved and devastated at once. It was what he’d wanted, after all: an unequivocal rejection to a childhood fancy that had gotten out of hand. Something to close off that piece of his heart once and for all, something to stop him from thinking about other options and other paths. Something to help him dedicate himself entirely to the woman he loves, that he wants to spend his life partnered to. 

(Something that can make him stop burning for Roy and Ling and men the way he never quite burns for Winry, even though he loves her, deep and strong and permanent. Something that can make him stop feeling like he’s lying to her, when he knows he’s not, when he knows what he wants and he _has it._ Something that can make this all not a problem.)

 _Trust me, Fullmetal,_ Roy says. A smile spills across his face, dark as molasses, sweet as syrup. _The day you receive a love letter from me…_

Roy stands. Ed doesn’t. He’s on the couch, he couldn’t move if he wanted to, he couldn’t breathe if he tried. Roy comes closer, and closer, and then he’s between Ed’s legs, bending down. He takes Ed’s chin in his hand - glove, no glove, Ed can’t tell, his skin is on fire regardless. _You **will** know._

 _How will I know?_ Ed asks. He means them honestly, but the words paint a dare, ring out like a challenge. 

_The message will come to life as you read,_ Roy’s hand moves from Ed’s chin, glances off his jaw, down his neck. _And I will be there._

 _You’re here now,_ Ed says. 

_My words heavy on your tongue,_ no one says, because they are kissing. _My voice warm in your ear,_ and they are horizontal on the couch, leather sticking to Ed’s skin where his shirt rucks up. _My intention like silk on your skin._ Roy’s hands are everywhere, too many hands, more than make sense, gloved and not gloved and rough and silk soft everywhere they touch.

 _Perhaps you will not have the opportunity to write,_ he whispers against Ed’s thigh. 

_I’ll write. I’ll write every single day,_ Ed promises senselessly, desperately. 

Roy hooks his fingers into the waistband of Ed’s pants, but then stops. Says, _Ms Rockbell. Now that you… are settling down…_

 _I don’t care, I don’t care, don’t say her name, not right now,_ Ed begs.

 _Should you find the occasion-_ Roy’s pulling away now, sitting up, frowning.

 _No! There’s no occasion that I tell her about this. Do you understand me? This is - no. She couldn’t…_ I _couldn’t…_

 _I should hope you learned some things from me,_ Roy says, face firm. Unyielding. 

_There’s only one thing I want to learn from you right now,_ Ed says, and reaches out, cups Roy’s face.

 _On-_ Roy starts. Ed doesn’t let him finish, pulls him into a kiss. 

_Okay? That’s all. That’s all on that topic,_ Ed says. 

_The ways of seduction,_ Roy says, wiggling his eyebrows, and Ed laughs. He’s light, he’s full of light, and it bursts through him and into the room. Beams of light, turning the whole world white, erasing Roy’s face until there’s only the ghost of where his smile was.

***

Ed wakes up. The clock says 3 AM. The calendar is on the wall, too far to see, but he knows what’s written. _R+R arrival._

Ed says, “Shit.”

Ed lays back down, and hopes not to dream again.

***

Winry’s positive that she’s misjudged Ed. It’s a shame that they’re going to have to send all of their friends and family away and pay back everyone they’ve hired to help with the wedding. Al’s going to be so disappointed.

“Ed’s a moron,” she says to Mr. Hannigan. He’s not so old as he pretends to be, hair not more than a little salt with the pepper even as it’s balding. He glowers at her.

“That boy sent _military_ to stay with me?” It’s incredulous and rightfully so. Mr. Hannigan lost both his sons in the Ishval war and his business besides, when the military commandeered his general goods store to use for supplies. The reimbursement check never came.

Well, not till Ed sent him one at the ripe age of 13. He’s been sending checks to everyone, not saying a word as if pretending that he doesn’t see Resembool as his home will make it true. Will counter his actions, blatantly kind as they are.

Mustang and Riza are standing just behind Mr. Hannigan, holding their bags and sweating visibly in their uniforms. They must have left work just in time to catch the final train; Winry’d think they’d know better than to traipse around these parts in full military regalia. 

“Ed,” she emphasizes, “is a moron. My apologies, Mr. Hannigan, you know how those boys get when they’re left to their own devices too long without anything productive to do. Say, do you need help with the cows? I know Matilda’s ‘bout to give birth, maybe I can send Ed your way to assist.”

“I guess that wouldn’t be too terrible,” he agrees.

She cocks her hip against the door frame and the movement drags her apron aside, showing the swell that’s begun in her belly. Mr. Hannigan doesn’t notice, but Riza does. Winry’s eyes catch her seeing, and her smile slips for just a moment before she’s turning the charm back on, shifting slightly to let the apron fall back. It’s not exactly a secret, that she’s expecting, but she didn’t like the thoughts people might have about what it means. Because it doesn’t mean much, in the grand scheme of things. Just bad timing.

“You care to come in for a drink? I think I’ve got some cookies if Ed ain’t got to ‘em, and you know Granny makes the best spiced lemonade for parties. M’sure we can sneak some, damages for the injustice.” 

Mustang twitches but keeps his mouth shut. He shifts his bag from hand to hand.

“Nah, I best be gettin’ home,” Mr. Hannigan says. 

“Say hi to Jim for me, and tell him I ain’t forget about his cast and that if I catch him walkin’ on it I’ll make him keep it on another week. Hold it, wait there,” the old man laughs, wiping at his face with a handkerchief as Winry dashes away. 

She comes back with cookies wrapped in a tea towel and hands them over, grinning at the way he hems and haws over it. “No, please, they’ll be gone before tomorrow if you don’t. Least I can do.” 

“Mhhm,” he says, shooting Mustang and Riza a dirty look. “I’ll be looking forward to seeing you tomorrow, Miss Winifred. Congratulations.” 

“Thank you,” Winry responds, smiling huge as he turns and heads down the path to town. She watches him until he’s more then out of earshot, and waves back when he turns to give her a parting wave. 

“I’m sorry,” she tells them through her smile, still waving.

Mustang clears his throat. “Ah, we didn’t realize--”

“Of course you didn’t know,” she cuts him off, stepping out of the way and gesturing them in. Mustang waits for Riza to step in first before following, and there’s a moment where Winry goes to take Riza’s bag before they have a mutual understanding of the violence should she follow through. 

Winry pulls her hand back and Riza smiles.

“ _Ed_ knows who here lost family in the war. He shouldn’t have picked for you to stay there, fuck, who else did he screw up?” She leads them further into the house, into the sitting room where there’s a worn fabric sofa in a dated yellow and lilac floral pattern. There’s also a low table, maybe meant for coffee or tea, and two matching love seats. To the left are stairs that lead up, and to the right is the entryway to the kitchen. 

“ED,” Winry shouts, and there’s some banging and the sound of the door opening accompanied with running water.

“YEAH? YOU OK?” he shouts back. Winry’s annoyed that his first question is over her wellbeing. She wants to be mad at him, damn it!

“SURE, BUT YOUR FRIENDS AIN’T!” she calls up to him, hand on her hip. There’s some scrabbling and Den barks and whines, Ed cursing.

“CAN THIS WAIT?”

“IF YOU’D DONE IT WHEN I ASKED YOU TO YOU WOULDN’T BE DOIN’ IT NOW!”

The door shuts, cutting off the sound of water and whatever muttered response Ed was making, and Winry rolls her eyes and turns back to Mustang and Riza.

“Sorry Ed’s such a dumbass. You’ll have to stay here, but I’m sure we can make it work. For now why don’t you set your bags up in Ed’s room and I can get you some beer and sandwiches?” 

“I’ll help you,” Riza says, finally putting her bag down. She does so directly on top of Mustang’s foot. Winry tries not to look too pleased. She’s being _mature_ about this.

“You’re a guest,” Winry says, but she gestures for Riza to follow her. “You’ll _help_ me eat the sandwiches.”

“I promise to drink your beer for you, too,” Riza says dryly. “How far along are you?”

Mustang must take their bags upstairs, because he doesn’t follow them. That’s. Yeah. That’s fine. That he’s going upstairs. Past Ed. Unsupervised.

Winry tries to refocus on Riza. She _likes_ Riza. And Riza deserves sandwiches.

***

Den’s shampoo smells like apples. 

Ed thinks it’s kind of stupid that the dog gets his own kind of shampoo, but he also notices that Winry’s hair tends to smell like apples lately, so he doesn’t comment on it. If Winry likes using dog shampoo so much then she can use dog shampoo. No need to use the Cretan shampoo he bought her that cost like a billion cenz and smells like...uh… he glances at the label. Like ‘Summer Seduction’. He pumps some more onto his hand, then looks speculatively over at Summer Seduction. Which has a flip cap.

Hm. 

He plops his hand onto the cloth, and then the cloth onto Den’s filthy, filthy, _disgusting,_ bring shame to the entire family, dirty dog body. It’d rained last night. Den had discovered the puddles at 6 am, and went from a mild embarrassment to a, “ED IF YOU DON’T CLEAN THAT DOG THE WAY I’VE BEEN TELLING YOU TO--”

He had made _great_ choices not cleaning the dog until now. The way _he_ sees it, he’d have had to clean the dog anyways today if he’d cleaned him before. So really, this grime soaked rag is proof that he was correct to wait. Yeah. The most correct. That’s him, a fucking, paragon of genius and proper planning and, “AHHHHHH!”

Ed spins at the unexpected thump of boots directly behind him, launching the rag at roughly head height, hands clapped together and arrays flickering behind his eyes.

Mustang’s. Standing there. Outside the bathroom door. With an indiscriminately brown and apple scented rag on his face.

Ed thinks of five different arrays that will bury him under the house and let him rot there until there’s nothing left but a husk of humiliation.

Mustang’s still wearing his gloves, and Ed cringes at the scent they’re sure to pick up from the nasty rag he’s pulling from his face. The look he’s giving Ed is unimpressed, and Den takes the opportunity to make his escape.

“Hey!” Ed shouts at him indignantly as he leaps out of the tub, skittering along the tile and shoving bodily past Mustang, who gets knocked into the door frame hard enough he makes a pained sound. “You son of a BITCH!”

“INCOMING!” Ed warns Winry, rushing to shove past Mustang just in time to hear Den’s skittering down the steps and Winry’s whistle to get him out of the house before he destroys it with his post-bath hysterics.

His palm stays flat on the opposite side of the door frame from Mustang, and once he hears Winry’s call back of “GOT HIM” he sighs, letting his whole body go limp. The last thing they need is Den breaking his hip or one of the tables. 

He turns to Mustang, finally, and gives him a sheepish smile. And. Uh. Wow. Mustang’s face is. Huh. Really close to his smile. Nothing to, uh, examine there. He wipes his hand through the remains of his sweaty bun and pulls at the hem of his shirt where it’s clinging to his belly, needing to cool himself off but also. Hm. Also showing Mustang his...skin. 

“What are you doing here?” Ed asks dumbly. Mustang continues to stare before passing off the rag to Ed, damp gloves against Ed’s flesh hand. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, he’s looking at him and not saying anything. Mustang wets his lips and Ed responds in kind, unable to help it.

The moment hangs, tense, and kinda. Wet. The entire room is full of steam, and they keep licking their lips. Their faces are. Close. 

“What are you doing here?” Ed reiterates. _Why are you this close to my human face right now with your human face?!_

“Winry told me I was staying in your room,” Mustang says. Then he blinks, takes a step back, and shakes his head. “No, apologies, she told me to put mine and Riza’s bags in your room.”

“Okay but,” Ed says, head still spinning. “Didn’t you go to Mr. Haverford’s like I told you?”

“Hannigan’s.” Roy corrects.

Ed takes a second, a deep breath, and allows himself to think some very mean thoughts about his own ability to pay attention to detail under pressure. 

“I think I see what happened,” Ed says. _Hannigan._ God. Him and Riza went to Mr. _Hannigan’s—_

“Mhhm,” Roy says. He quirks a brow, pointedly. “Aren’t you going to show me to your bed...room?”

There was. A weirdly long pause between bed and room. Ed wasn’t just imagining that, was he? _When I write you a letter, Fullmetal—_

“HahahAHAHA!” Ed declares loudly, for lack of any other reaction prepared. “Yep! Yes! This way! It’s this way!”

Mustang pauses, struggling to keep from making a face. Ed’s not sure what kind of face, really. He’d hazard a guess at confused, or maybe even amused. Whatever it is he’s trying not to show, it makes him look like he’s trying not to sneeze. 

“I see you’re missing a few screws as usual, Fullmetal.”

“I don’t have a _single_ screw loose, they named me Fullmetal because I have five times more screws than you or anyone else combined. I have screws like crazy. I have _awesome_ screws.” Ed is dimly aware of his own babbling. Did he have any coffee this morning? No. He hadn’t. He needs maybe two pots, immediately.

Roy stops him before they enter, hand at his elbow. There are already bags set outside the door, like he’d found the room and was being… polite, waiting for Ed. He turns Ed to catch his eyes, his own troubled, probably. Definitely not handsome. 

“Edward,” he says, voice low. His hand is like a brand on Ed’s elbow (that’s funny because he’s the _Flame_ Alchemist), and he looks like he means to say more but he doesn’t. 

“That’s my name,” Ed agrees. “I’d say don’t wear it out, but I’m pretty sure you’ve used it like twice _ever_ , so—”

Mustang removes his hand, opens the door. It’s. Ed immediately reaches past him and closes the door. 

“Hm,” Ed says. “No.”

“Winry said to put our bags in there,” Mustang says, and his eyes are sparkling. Ed doesn’t want to hear it.

“I can do that! Just. You know. Maybe you should be downstairs. Right now. _Right now.”_

Mustang shrugs, and he’s opening his mouth to comment on the room, and Ed just. Cannot do this. He will bury them in this house. He will destabilize the foundations and his room full of dirty underwear, with the dildo tossed right out in the open on his pillow, will fall on top of him and he’ll suffocate under them. 

“Of course. I would never besmirch a man his alone time before his wedding—”

“GET OUT OF HERE!” Ed shrieks, and grabs the baggage as hostages and quite possibly weapons if Mustang doesn’t start fucking running.

Roy’s grinning now, and he _is_ Roy in this, eyes crinkled and teeth white. 

“But Edward,” he hums, “I haven’t even come... _in_ yet. How can I get out of... _here_?”

His gaze flicks towards Ed’s— Ed slams through the door to his room, and slams it shut behind him, baggage in hand. 

There’s a moment where all Ed can do is hope that Mustang fucking listens to him for once in his goddamn life and—

 _Tap tap tap._ It’s not a knock. It’s like if the bastard just, took two fingers? And tapped on his door? Like he knew Ed was braced against it, back to the wood as if bodily trying to keep him from entering. Ed can feel the vibrations down his spine in a frankly indecent way. Not because it’s indecent--even though Mustang _defines_ indecent conduct--but because it’s. 

Roy’s fingers. On his door. To his bedroom. In his _house._

“Are you… occupying yourself?” Roy asks from the other side of the door, and _oh,_ he _definitely_ saw the dildo. 

Ed eyes the window speculatively. If he goes out in the hall, Roy is there. If he goes out the window, then a possible drop to his death is there. It’s really no choice at all when he puts it like that. He drops the baggage (well, gently _sets down_ the baggage, half of this is Riza’s) and darts for the window. The door cracks open behind him just as he’s over the sill, and Roy makes a startled noise.

Ed realizes he left the dildo on the bed, because bad impulse decisions are going to lead to bad consequences, and he _never fucking learns_. Even bad impulse decisions with months of planning go poorly. It’s borderline blasphemous to compare leaving a dildo on the bed to thinking a drop of blood is enough for a human soul, but-- 

Roy motherfucking Mustang laugh is ringing out through the window behind him. From his _bedroom_. So no, it’s actually about as close an analogy as he can get. 

He cuts around the house, shaking the jitters out of his hands as he jogs to the front door. Den greets him with a drop and a butt waggle, asking to play, and Ed pets at his head as he passes in apology. 

Winry’s in the kitchen, the line of her back screaming satisfaction because she knew Ed’s room was an embarrassment and that’s why she had Mustang and Hawkeye put their bags there instead of in, say, _Al’s_ room, the one currently unused and _impeccably clean._

There’s zero room for plausible deniability about the _extent_ of the embarrassment either, seeing as she’d _helped_ get it there. 

He’s barefoot, but he knows every single creak and groan in this entire house and it’s nothing to sneak behind Winry where she’s talking animatedly to Hawkeye, glass of lemonade in hand. Hawkeye’s Ed’s one true love, after all, because she clocks him instantly, evaluates, and determines that a. Whatever Ed’s up to is entertaining enough to let slide or b. Whatever Ed’s up to doesn’t matter ‘cause they’re _bros._

Ed hooks his arm around Winry’s waist, catches her glass as she shrieks and drops it, and plants his lips on her neck to blow the wettest, _loudest_ raspberry. Winry hates it. She always hates it when he does it, which is why he does it so much, and he’s expecting the hit even before sharp elbow meets solar plexus. 

“Oof,” he says, but he keeps his arm around her hip cause _he ain’t scared of her._ “Are you sure I’m the one with automail? I think your elbow is solid steel--”

Winry’s wiping at her neck, disgust on her face. He really did spit on her a lot, and she glances at her palm and wipes it back on his cheek. Ugh. She hasn’t been afraid of his germs since they were six. 

“Here, I think you forgot this,” she says.

“It was a _gift,”_ Ed exclaims, pouting dramatically. “You’d return a special gift? Of LOVE? This close to our wedding?”

“Be glad I’m not returning the _wedding,”_ Winry says primly.

Ed’s gonna end this battle of wits with a snappy retort, he really is, but then he’s distracted when Hawkeye removes her jacket and lays it on the back of a kitchen chair familiarilly, just like any of them would. She’s got new shoulder holsters, a dark leather with red stitching. They look custom. They look _cool as hell._

“Eyy, Hawkeye, you bringin’ those guns to the wedding?” he lifts his flesh arm and flexes for emphasis, eyeing her own (beefier, he can admit it) arms where they’re exposed in her black under-armor. 

“Only if I’m expecting trouble,” she deadpans, eyeing him. “So, yes.” 

Ed glances down at Winry, about to bring her in on the joke, when he sees her cheeks flushed and that awkward tilt to her shoulders and— okay. So apparently Riza can get it with _everyone._ This is...fine. This is not something he’s going to start laughing about and point out in front of Riza. Nope. Nope. He can control this. 

Except. Heh. “Hey, did you get your hair cut? I can’t really tell with it in the clip, lemme see it.” He’s only gonna torment Winry a _little,_ he _promises._

Riza quirks a brow, but she’s a good sport, and takes it out, shakes it out a bit. “Nope. Longer, actually. What about you?”

Winry half drops, half sets her lemonade down on the dining room table, and leaves the room as Ed’s pulling the remains of his bun apart. “PEE.” she says loudly, which works as an excuse if you’re pregnant, Ed guesses. 

Mustang chooses then to walk in, witness Ed and Hawkeye with their hair down in various states of undress, turn on his heel and head back into the sitting room. 

“This is eerily similar to a dream I had one time,” he mutters as he goes.

“Do you think he has to pee too?” Ed asks, sniggering a little. Shit. So much for _no comment._

Riza sighs. “I wouldn’t put it past him to try and mark his territory. Do you care about that couch?”

“Not really.” Ed shrugs and sits down at the table. “So. How’ve things been? Did you modify your workout? You’re gonna make me look bad. Tell me your protein shake secrets.”

“You say that as if it’s ever been a competition.” She states it like a fact when it’s clearly a taunt. One day Ed will learn how she does it, and then …. Well, Mustang will be sorry. Probably only him though. 

“Let a guy dream!”

***

Roy is already settled on the couch by the time he realizes Pinako is in the room. It becomes more unclear to her every year how this… _boy_ … was responsible for the razing of Ishval. 

But she has boys of her own, so perhaps it isn’t that much of a mystery. 

“Colonel,” she says, just to make him jump guiltily. He performs admirably, lifting nearly two inches.

“Mrs Rockbell,” he says, and he tries to cover for his reaction by going blank faced. Pity he’s got such expressive eyes. She can read his entire soul from here. His filthy, putrid, perverted soul. 

First impressions mean a lot, especially to a politician. Roy-boy may be military, he may be a killer, but at heart he’s a politician. He likes pretty young blonde things, and he likes being liked, and most pathetically of all, he needs to be needed. If the country wasn’t such a mess, he’d find one that needed him to hold the mop. Good thing he spent his youth tearing it apart, then.

“Call me Pinako,” she says. 

“Pinako,” he parrots, obediently. Dogs can be trained to speak on command, after all. But then he continues, the dumb thing. “A pleasure.”

Pinako takes an excruciatingly long puff on her pipe. 

It’s an art, inhaling the smoke this deeply, letting it settle into her lungs and nerves and muscles until she’s relaxed enough to suppress her first instincts. It’s an art she’s mastered. Sweat is beading on his temple as he waits for her reply, gathering in the stubble above his lip. His ears twitch towards every sound in the house and the yard, and when somewhere her old grandfather clock chimes out the hour, he nearly falls off the couch.

She keeps inhaling, until his nerves are funny instead of infuriating.

“We’ll see,” Pinako says, smoke billowing from her mouth. When she smiles it looks uncomfortable, as if the skin isn’t used to moving that way, the muscles atrophied from decades of disuse. She knows this. 

She smiles as wide as she can, and watches the sweat above his lip trickle into his mouth as he tries to smile back. 

Her granddaughter is going to have a beautiful wedding.

***

Ed’s just about convinced Hawkeye to arm wrestle him when Winry screams from out front loud enough that Ed’s at his feet, array crackling between his palms before he even registers what she’s screaming. 

“ _AL!_ ” 

Hawkeye holsters her gun from behind him but Ed holds onto the array, transmuting his arm into a blade and launching himself at his brother with a grin. 

“Brother!” Al wails dismally, but he drops his bags and takes Ed down with a smooth swipe at his ankle, one hand twisting Ed’s wrist and the other pushing up against his elbow to flip him with his own momentum. Ed hits the ground hard and stays there, laughing up at Al as he settles his foot on Ed’s chest. The wrench that Winry had tossed supportively into the fray somehow lands directly on his stomach. 

“You look like a harlot,” Al greets him cheerfully, glancing at Ed’s messy hair, short-shorts and loose tank. 

“You look healthy,” Ed responds, ‘cause he _does._ “Did you finally get laid?”

Al makes a complicated expression for just long enough for Ed to register it, before Winry’s throwing herself into his arms.

“Maybe he has, maybe he hasn’t, but that sounds like the kind of first question a _harlot_ would ask,” Winry says, and kicks Ed a little. She’d seen the face too, then. Ed rolls away from her foot, his tank top twisting under him and rolling up just as his shorts tug a little lower on his hipbones.

Maybe they’ve got a point, actually. 

“I should go change,” Ed says. “Unless…”

“You may not have my coat for material,” Al says loudly. “I’m ashamed to know you. What are you, nineteen?”

“Al!” Winry mock-gasps, hand at her mouth. “He’s _only_ nineteen!” 

“HAR HAR,” Ed yells, kicking at Al. “YAK IT UP. YOU GUYS GOT A FEW MORE MONTHS, TOPS.”

“But then you’ll only be--” Al starts, and Winry joins him, “Tweeeeeeenttttyyyyy!”

“You both will only be _dead,”_ Ed says mutinously.

“Alphonse,” Granny greets him from the porch. 

Roy trails after her, looking like a kicked puppy. Ed needs to know what happened _right now_ and he shares a look with Hawkeye, who shakes her head the slightest amount. Damn it, she doesn’t have any intel. 

He’s gonna have to get Granny the good pipe grass if she’s gonna spill to him how badly she fucked Mustang up. And that shit’s _expensive._ Granny adjusts for inflation every 2 months, and there’s no family discount. 

“You couldn’t wait for me?” he asks her. She blows smoke out the side of her mouth and pats Al’s head affectionately when he bends down to kiss her cheek in greeting. 

“What did you bring me, hm?” She asks him, ignoring Ed completely. 

Al grins. “Special Xingese concentrates. They’ve got these flowers there, poppies. I got you some seeds too, and a gardening manual that I translated. I think they’ll look lovely in the backyard.”

***

“Where should I move their bags?” Ed asks Winry in a soft voice. They’re all gathered in the kitchen, a tight fit at the best of times, but horribly packed with the extra bodies in the house and Al home again. There’s a line to get at the food laid out on the stove and the counters, and then they’ll probably eat outside. He might as well move the bags now, before he falls into a food coma and forgets.

The only thing worse than Roy seeing his room would be _Riza_ seeing his room.

“You can move Riza’s to the living room, she told me earlier that the couch seemed good enough for her when I asked,” Winry says back, just as softly. 

“Oh,” Ed frowns. He’d assumed that _he’d_ be taking the couch if he was lucky, sleeping under the stars if he wasn’t. It was his fuck up that’d left them short on rooms, after all. “But what about—”

“No need to move it,” Winry cracks her neck, her back, fidgeting like she does when she wants to be hitting something but can’t. “Mustang is bunking with you.”

Ed’s brain grinds to a halt. 

“Win,” he starts, voice even lower. She frowns sharply and catches herself-- they have company-- and takes his hand, pulling him out and towards the stairs where they have a bit of privacy. 

“I can see you watching each other,” she tells him, and Ed shakes his head because they _talked_ about this, he thought they were at an _understanding._

__

__

__“I’m, I can’t stop having eyes but that doesn’t mean I’m going to _do anything,_ I saw you watching Ri—”

“Look,” Winry cuts him off, “I’m not mad. I’m a little jealous, but that’s just-- I got jealous when Al left for Xing, I mean, I just like having you and. It’s making up for lost time, or something. Anyways,” she squeezes his hand and chews her lip a little, but she’s not shaking or crying or anything so maybe it’s not as bad as he first thought. 

“You’re bunking with Mustang. It’s-- we get married tomorrow. Not tonight. And, I trust you, no matter what you do. Or don’t do. Or want to do, or--”

“ _Winry,_ ” Ed hisses, appalled, confused. “I’m not gonna _cheat on you_.” 

“It’s not cheating if I told you you could,” Winry points out. 

Ed makes a face like he just bit into a lemon. “No.”

“Yeah, that’s how it works,” Winry says. “Literally how it works.”

“Well _I_ said it’s cheating, so it’s definitely cheating,” Ed says.

“On who? Yourself?” Ed wants to shout but he can’t, and before he can even get another argument out Winry’s shaking her head again, hair whipping around. 

“Shh, shut up. Seriously. I’ve thought about this a lot. Would you regret it if you never took the chance? Cause I know I would if I never took the chance with _you.”_

“I don’t think you’re okay with this,” Ed says, finally. He doesn’t answer her question. There’s no good answer. “And it’s not equivalent. I’m—it’s not even.”

He knows as soon as he says it it’s gonna piss her off. She hates when he brings up equivalent exchange (raged once when she was hormonal and already spiraling about how bodies couldn’t be equivalent for love) and a conversation on infidelity is no exception. 

“Love isn’t equivalent!” she shouts predictably, throwing her hands up in the air. 

“Quiet!” Ed snaps. It’s the worst thing he could say, and he knows it, but the thought of someone— into _this_ conversation— he drops his voice to a whisper. “Sorry. Look. Just. If you find… something… someone. You want. You’re right. We’re not married yet. So. I can’t— it would be. It’s not a choice if you don’t have the choice too, Win.”

Her eyes soften in that way they do when Ed knows he’s fucked for whatever she wants. He’d do anything to keep that warmth on her face, loving and fond. “You’re a moron, Ed.”

“I already said I was okay with this,” she adds. “I’m not gonna hold us to different standards.”

“And I’m not going to do anything,” Ed says, but it comes out kind of sarcastic. Fuck. Shit. He clears his throat. “It’s not a double standard if it’s _literally_ the same standard, gearhead.”

“Sure you’re not. But if you did, I said you could,” Winry doesn’t rise to the bait. 

“But I’m not gonna.” Ed says, just to be obstinate. _He’s gonna. Oh god._

“Yep. Sure you aren’t.” Winry holds his gaze. 

“I’m not _gonna,”_ Ed pleads. He’s just lying now, though he’s not sure who he’s supposed to be lying to anymore.

Winry’s eyes flash, and he thinks they’re finally going to get somewhere—

But then someone knocks on the front door.

“Ah,” Winry says, and she puts on her good girl smile, the one she pastes on for company. Her voice even gets warmer, forced by the spread of her lips. “That’ll be the Drachman cousins. Right on time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endnotes:
> 
> The couch is low to the ground and a bit ratty, the pattern worn off the fabric on parts of the cushions. But it’s wide and long, and when Roy sits on it, surprisingly comfortable. He glances to his side, sees Riza having the same thought but for different reasons.
> 
> “No,” he says. “Absolutely _not.”_
> 
> “Sir,” Riza says. “You know I’d never abandon you in enemy territory.”
> 
> She takes a chocolate chip cookie from the plate on the table, eyes fixed firmly on Roy’s, butt wiggling further into the very comfortable couch. She takes a bite of her cookie. 
> 
> “Hawkeye,” Roy begs.
> 
> “Call me Riza, Roy,” Riza says, and spreads her legs wide, leans back. Her upper body sinks into the cushions at least a solid inch. “We’re on vacation, not assignment.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at the beginning of this fic, we told you to strap in. 
> 
> this is where we remind you to keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

The Drachman Cousins consist of an elderly woman with a striking similarity to Granny Pinako, a strikingly beautiful girl who moves like Lan Fan, and a huge man that reminds Ed strikingly of Sig. 

Ed is struck silent. 

“Granddaughter,” the woman greets Winry, two wizened hands at each cheek to guide her down for intense eye contact. “You’re beautiful! Thank goodness you didn’t get your looks from that old hag.” 

“Ksenia, I’m surprised you’re still alive,” Granny says from behind them. 

“Ech, it’s Babushka now,” the woman waves her hand dismissively, shoving past to make room for the others. “This is Polina and Boris.” She adds as an afterthought. 

“We brought booze,” the man says, thickly accented, and Ed turns on Winry. 

“How do I not _know_ about them?” His voice is a little. Strained. Winry’s enjoying this, if the way her lip curls up is any indication. 

Before anyone can explain to him how Winry, who he’s known his entire life, has multiple extended family members he’s never heard of, the babushka’s swatting at Granny’s antenna and swiping her pipe. “You didn’t say! What, you were too afraid they would see we’re better than you?” She takes a deep inhale and holds it, eyeing as Granny simply takes out another one and starts packing it. Al hands her the baggie like some sort of brown nosing psychic. 

“Al!” Ed’s definitely sounding a little strangled. He--they— _family?_ “Did you know?” 

“Know what?” 

“Y’all are bein’ _rude_ ,” Winry chastises, herding them all onto the furniture in the sitting room. Hawkeye and Mustang have taken up space in the entryway of the kitchen, watching the newcomers with sharp disinterest and concealed panic respectively. Hawkeye had taken advantage of the chaos to skip to the front of the line and fill her plate. Ed’s pretty sure that’s seconds of the lemon glazed bread. 

“Wait,” Ed says. “Hold up.” Mustang is _definitely_ hiding some recognition behind his stupid handsome I-know-everything-and-I’m-calm mask. His eyes are a little tight, his lips turned down slightly more than normal, and he’s stiff with his hand in his pocket in a posture that Ed recognizes as the one he uses when he’s trying to hide a snap. Ed’s always thought it’s a really stupid gesture, since it involves sticking the most combustable part of his body in the most flammable area of his coat.

“Wait wait _wait._ Mustang. Do _you_ know them?” 

Wow, that deer in the headlights look is incredible. Ed laughs, hysterical, and Mustang coughs and scratches at his chin in an effort to seem nonchalant. Nonchalant is _gone._ Mustang _murdered_ it, lit it on fire, and danced on its partially burned corpse. 

“Not as such, although it’s a pleasure to have the opportunity.” He sweeps in to kiss hands and greet the guests, babushka staring at him as she pulls out an envelope. 

“How did you gain passage, ma’am?” he asks casually, and Ed almost howls in embarrassment, because _holy shit that’s the smoothest thing he can think of on short notice?_ “We currently have a closed travel agreement with Drachma.” 

They hold eye contact for a beat, then another, the silence stretching. 

Ed wants to rip his own hair out. He has. He has. Fucking. Foreigners in his house, for his wedding, who clearly got here illegally, and they’re _related to him_ (or about to be, whatever), and Mustang’s first fucking instinct is to _ask them how they snuck into the country._ Rude. Mother. Fucker. He’s gonna smother him with a pillow tonight. That’s what Winry was offering him, the chance to discreetly murder Mustang pre-wedding. Where is his subtlety? Why did Ed ever assume that Roy _had any?_ Ed’s got _dibs_ on the rude questions!

“You forget so quickly. General Armstrong granted us passage, as did you,” she tells him, passing over the envelope. Mustang’s frown deepens and as pulls it open, refusal on his tongue before he freezes, eyes scanning the document once, twice. 

Ed decides right then, right there, that no matter how shady these strangers are, they are all his best friends. Hawkeye ducks back into the kitchen and comes back out with more lemon bread. He glares at her, but she shrugs unrepentantly. 

“So I did,” he agrees shortly, eyes skittering over it disbelievingly. Again. On goes the warm mask, the one he uses in board meetings, when dealing with pro-Bradley constituents, or when he’s trying to con an extra dessert out of a waitress. “I hope your travel from... _Xing_ went well. Did you happen to cross paths with Alphonse Elric during your travel through the…” he glances at their furs and hats and heavy boots, “... _desert.”_

“I knew I recognized you! Oh man, I never thought that clothing would work so well in the desert, but it’s true that it gets cold at night, huh?” Al jumps in cheerfully. He holds Mustang’s gaze for half a beat as long as the babushka before Mustang’s warm mask crumbles into a pathetic moue at the betrayal. 

“Huh,” Mustang repeats blankly. 

“Yeah,” Ed says, nodding vigorously. “When I went to the desert it was burns all day and frostbite all night on my arm and leg. If I had had a bear pelt then—”

“Would have fared _so_ much better,” Al agrees. “Or even some mink. But with just those loose robes—”

“Pathetically underprepared,” Ed finishes. He’s not even trying to hide his grin that’s aimed directly at Mustang’s dignity. “Did ya know that sweat can catch inside a steel joint and turn to ice? Because when that sun set, man.”

“And you didn’t...mention this,” Mustang says. “In your report.”

“What report,” Ed says. “We were there illegally because you didn’t kill a lady but couldn’t just say that like a normal person and had to deck me and then send me on a wild goose chase.”

“Yeah, why _didn’t_ you just tell him?” Al asks.

“I think I’m going to get dinner,” Mustang announces, turning on his heel against a room that has cruelly turned on him, and heading into the kitchen. “Where did all the lemon bread go?”

***

Ed tries to corner Winry again, but she’s slippery, like a cat drenched in oil. Every time he has a hand on her she slides out, cutting around a corner as if she hasn’t noticed or striking convenient conversation with one of the many people packed into his house like pickled fish. 

He could go for pickled fish about now. 

He ends up waiting for her in the bathroom, having timed her pregnancy breaks by now. He’s got his arms and legs spread out to brace himself along the molding of the ceiling, ponytail swinging lightly in the breeze from the open privacy window. _Try and avoid me now, you love-of-my-life-who-I-am-absolutely-faithful-to-in-all-circumstances-no-matter-the-temptation!_

The door opens. Ed grins viciously, dropping down and landing in a crouch on the tile with a satisfied “ah-hah! Can’t avoid me NOW.” 

“I wasn’t aware that I was,” Mustang says. Ed is face level with his hands, which are rapidly rezipping and buttoning up his trousers. 

“Excuse me I must die,” Ed says, and crouch-skitters out of the room.

He crouch-skitters out of the house, too, Al almost tripping over him and one of the Drachmans letting out a startled yelp. He doesn’t look to see who it was, but he brushes against the fur of their coat as he heads out the front door. He pauses at the stairs, and remembers to stand up, and then stands up and runs into the nearby grouping of trees. Not real woods, Resembool is mostly farmland and they got rid of their real woods years ago, but close enough for his privacy purposes.

He buries his face in his elbow and screams as loud as he can. 

“I’m trying to _pee,”_ Winry’s voice complains, and he startles so hard he almost pisses himself. When he looks to his left, five feet over and behind a privacy bush, there is indeed his fiance, crouched and glaring.

“You’re the one who should have joined the military,” he hisses at her.

“If Riza can’t recruit me you _definitely_ can’t,” Winry says dismissively. “She offered—”

“I DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT SHE OFFERED!” Ed yells, frantically covering his ears. Winry makes a face at him, and, the entire point of this was to get her alone while she was peeing, but this is not a win. He has— no thoughts. Head empty. Heart racing. Dick chubbing. 

“Did you even remember to bring toilet paper?” Change the subject. He’s gonna change the subject, that’s right. Wait. He came out here for a reason, and imagining Winry with her head between Hawkeye’s thighs wasn’t it. 

... _or is it._

“Of course I remembered to bring toilet paper, what the hell kind of hick do you think I am?” Winry says, but his mind’s already racing. 

“Winry, so you know how we were talking about that thing? What if… I know Riza’s taking the couch but _what if—_ ” 

“Edward,” she warns, not even bothering to try and be shy as she cleans herself up and stands, readjusting her skirt. He watched her pee on like 20 arrays, a little woods tinkle is small fish after watching herself spite-wipe up with his notes. “You better not be using Hawkeye to _bribe_ me.”

“I would not be the one using Hawkeye,” Ed says virtuously. 

“I’m gonna tell her,” Winry decides thoughtfully. 

“NO! And it’s not--I’m just suggesting, maybe, if you wanted it to be fair, then you could—”

“Hey, Riza, how you been, hope you like the lemon bread, you wanna eat me out? Ed wants you to, thinks it’ll make him eating out Roy’s ass _equivalent_ or something. Sounds fair, right?”

“Isn’t that what you’re telling me to do!” Ed yells, and then makes a concerted effort to stay yelling but _quieter_ because the house isn’t all that far away. “I’m just saying you should have the option! The same one you gave me! You psychotic wrench hag who really wants me to be shot I guess! I love you and I want you to be happy!”

She’s obviously ramping up for a really good tease, but Ed’s words shut her up, jaw snapping shut hard enough he can hear her teeth hit each other. 

“I hate you,” she says fondly. “And discussing me rawing Riza like she’s a piece of meat is incredibly disrespectful. But I see what you’re trying to do.” Winry makes an aborted motion with her arms like she’s gonna hug him but stops, making a face. 

Ed gapes at her, because all _he’d_ said was ‘hey you know that thing we talked about’, _Winry_ was the one who got graphic with it and who brought up Riza and Sex in the first place--or no, maybe Riza hadn’t brought up sex to convince her to join the military. Maybe that’s just literally all Ed can think about right now, nerves rubbed raw and horny. 

“Sorry I got weird,” he says, and takes a step forward, mirroring her outspread arms. He’s not sure what the face was about though so he’s just gonna...let her take the lead on whether they hug or not. 

“I’m not gonna fucking touch you with my piss hands Ed,” she says, blinking suspiciously. 

“I could alchemize the piss off,” Ed offers. 

“You say the most romantic things,” 

“I’ll hold the door for you into the house?” Ed tries. That’s… romantic. Gallant. Chivalrous.

He got nowhere with this conversation, but at least he isn’t loudly saying that he’s not going to try and sleep with Roy anymore.

Except for the part where he probably is. 

***

They get inside with little fanfare, and Roy is standing in the hall, because of course he is, and he comes up to talk to them, because of _course he does,_ and Winry yelps, “Back up! Pee hands!” and he jumps backwards and looks guilty and slightly confused and stares at his own hands because—

“Did you not wash your hands?” Ed snaps. “What the fuck, Roy.”

“No, I did,” Roy says, visibly shaken. “Just, I couldn’t get the hot water to run, and it’s less effective with cold, and--I’m going to go wash them again.”

“You have fire powers!” Ed shouts after him, “Nothing should ever be cold for you!” 

“I needed that sink,” Winry whines. Then she gets an evil glint, eyeing up where Mustang’s left alone and isolated from his backup in the small washroom. He even left the door open, and Ed doesn’t have a chance to grab her before she swings inside and shuts the door behind her with a definitive click. 

Soft laughter has Ed turning on his heel, one of the cousins with a completely blank face staring back. Was she the one who made that deceptively sweet laughter? She’s sure got the look down, all lithe and wispy, from her long legs to her thin, red hair. Her eyes are the kind of hard that he sees in snipers, though, ice blue and unwavering. 

“Um, hi,” he says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans nervously. This is his family, technically. The concept of family does weird things to his brain and his chest, and he’s not sure how much he likes it or hates it. “So you’re related to Winry? To Win-win? Winry for the win, right? I also like her. I like her so much I’m marrying her! And you’re related to her so you’re _like_ her, haha, get, get it, but I won’t marry you, because that would be weird. Unless that’s something that happens in Drachma! I’m still not doing it but it’s like culturally insensitive to call it weird then, right? Please stop me, holy _shit—”_

The cousin’s mouth twitches for just a moment before she turns and walks back towards the kitchen, silent. 

He’s fear-sweating heavily, and he made himself look like an absolute idiot in front of her, so if there was ever any doubt that she’s related to the Rockbells there isn’t any now. 

“Hhh,” Ed whines, and decides that he’s going to bed.

“Pipsqueak,” Pinako says conversationally, catching his arm on his way up the stairs. “Come show Boris where the chopping trees are, the last thing we need is piss-wood.” 

***

“Winry will kill me if I alchemize any of the furniture,” Ed finds himself saying as Roy reels him in by the hem of his shirt. It’s true-- most of it was handmade by her father, he found out the hard way, and alchemy marks are almost impossible to remove. “So I figure you’re gonna sleep on the floor cause it’s _my_ fucking wedding tomorrow.” 

Roy’s mouth is really goddamn close, and his, his hand is in the hem of Ed’s shirt, his eyes are dark and smoldering and he’s not listening to any of the normal small talk Ed’s making. He’s not even acknowledging it, the same way Ed’s not acknowledging that they’re centimeters from kissing, that he can feel Roy’s breath on his lips. 

“Tell me to stop,” Roy breathes, and Ed feels the indignation spike. Like _hell._ Ed licks his lips, and the tip of his tongue catches on the edge of Roy’s lips, that’s how close they are. He swallows, hard. 

“I guess we could share bedding,” he says weakly.

Roy’s hands are sliding under the shirt now, and they’re scalding, exactly the way that he always imagined they’d be. Hands that make fire oughta’ feel like fire. 

“Tell me to stop,” Roy repeats.

“Don’t make me say _yes,”_ Ed snaps, and then kisses him.

They come together like a fucking train wreck, two trains going full speed, if one leaves at 3pm from Central Station and the other at 1am from Resembool Station then at what time will they collide to the sound of wet skin and moaning? His teeth catch Roy’s lip and Roy makes a, a _sound_ , the fucking _asshole,_ and Ed only whimpers cause he wasn’t expecting the stubble or the way Roy bites back. 

He wasn’t expecting any of this to feel so— real. Or he had been, but only in the worst way. It feels real in a way worse than the worst way, real like the blooming pain from a punch to the face, real like rain on overheated skin, real like he hasn’t felt real in years. Ling had felt real like this, unbearably close and incomprehensibly intimate. Winry feels— 

He tries not to think about Winry, but he can’t help the natural comparison. Between his data pool of Winry, Ling and now Roy, he fucking knows, he _knows,_ and it’s not fair to her cause he enjoys fucking her, he does. 

But this isn’t the same. This is dying and coming back and feeling your capillaries and your nerves and your fucking neurons shooting around, screaming _yes yes yes_ as you catch on fire and die again. Just to come back when Roy kisses him, breathing his life back into his body with a moan so deep it vibrates, it restarts his heart. 

He wants this so bad that he feels sick with it, feverish, shaking. 

Roy is shaking too. He’s-- he’s just as affected, maybe, and when Ed lets his eyes open just the barest amount, his own eyelashes obscuring his vision, he sees the face Roy’s making and has to cling to him or he’ll fucking drop. 

He looks absolutely wrecked. He looks. Real. He looks like this is _real to him._

Ed shoves him onto the bed, and Roy’s so surprised he goes, hits it back first and almost slides off before Ed’s catching him by the hips and dragging him up until he’s steadied and horizontal. Roy lets himself be moved, and that’s— 

Ed climbs on top of him but not really, not touching, knees to the mattress and hands beside his face. 

“This okay?” he says, inanely. He. He has to ask though. At least once. Because if it’s not okay, if he was somehow mistaken in _any way,_ he doesn’t wanna find out after he’s started grinding down on Roy’s dick.

Roy’s eyes are wide, blown, lips parted and red and he looks like every fucking lewd dream Ed’s ever had about him, unconcious or otherwise. He doesn’t answer, just closes his eyes and grabs at Ed’s head and pulls him down, hips arching up and mouth following. The kiss is messy, distracted. 

They have all night, technically, but Ed’s not— not sure how long this will last, this truce of _not talking about it,_ because talking will almost certainly ruin it. He wants this to last, wants to drag it out until they’re sobbing with exhaustion and fall asleep right after, because as soon as their heads clear one of them is gonna ask about _anything_ and things will get bad. 

They shift at the same time, Ed’s legs spreading over Roy’s hips as Roy’s hands slide up and under the back of Ed’s shirt, petting him, _feeling_ him. He moans again, a quiet thing. He’s probably used to being quiet, Ed thinks, between the military barracks and then— hell, did he fuck on the front? 

Or maybe he’s thinking about the thin farmhouse walls, not realizing that _Ed_ lives in these thin farmhouse walls and the only places they’re _thin_ are public areas. 

“I wanna hear you,” Ed says, because he’s always gotten his lines from Winry’s romance novels and it hasn’t _failed him so far._

Roy freezes, and Ed realizes that, fuck, he just broke the rules neither of them actually made. Those unwritten things that exist in between the lines, and if he steps over them, the lines that is, the lines in this incredibly mixed metaphor, then he loses this. He’ll lose everything, and he’s barely even had it.

“Nevermind,” he says, and his voice cracks, straight down the middle, and he’s. 

He’s gonna throw himself out the window again. 

“It’s just that the walls are soundproofed?” he says, _still talking,_ holy shit, is there _no mercy?_ “So I thought maybe, you didn’t know…”

“Soundproofed,” Roy repeats, voice wrecked. “So that your wife can’t hear us.”

“I’m loud, and _fiance,_ ” Ed says, in case Roy somehow hasn’t noticed, and uh— well no, actually, the wall between his and Winry’s room _isn’t_ soundproofed, but that’s not an issue because she’d _told him_ and she’d also followed Roy into the bathroom and had to have told _him_ so— 

“Ed,” Roy says, and it’s ominous. He shifts, getting his elbows underneath himself so that he can sit up, and Ed has to tighten his grip with his thighs so that he doesn’t overbalance and it feels _good,_ Roy’s hips even twitch into it and they _both_ can feel each other _surely._

“That’s my name,” Ed says. It’s nervous, high, and he sits up a bit too, so that he can take the weight off one of his hands and use it to rub his face. 

Roy slides his palm under Ed’s shirt along his belly, mapping out the skin with a calloused, scarred palm. It goes straight to his dick. It’s barely a caress, and Roy’s still not taking Ed’s shirt off, just touching him under the safety of cotton and-- deniability, probably. 

The light’s on. Maybe he’s...shy? 

Sounds fake, but okay.

“You should tell me to stop,” Roy says again, and _fuck_ if three times isn’t the piss him off charm. Rage surges through him, muddling with the horniness, and he shoves his hips forward in a mean grind. 

“Okay, fine,” Ed snaps, and he grabs the hand on his stomach, pulls it off, pins it to the mattress. “Stop fucking teasing me. Stop writing me letters and making moves you don’t have any plan to follow through on. Stop treating me like a fucking disposable conquest that you get to humiliate and fluster, but don’t have to—”

Roy surges up, kissing him, easily breaking out of Ed’s grip to wrap a palm around the back of Ed’s neck and grip him hard, easier to move him where he wants him. Ed wants himself wherever Roy wants him, and he opens his mouth and moans into it even if he’s still fucking furious. Actually, he bites at Roy hard enough to get a yelp and when Roy pulls back he grins. 

“This what you get off on? Making me feel like shit? Like I’m _disposable?”_ His grin spreads, widens, and he chooses the word that’ll hit home hardest, the one written by troops and squads and suppliers and towns on reports from the front. _“Expendable?”_

It hits him hard, the way Ed knew it would, and satisfaction rushes through him at the way that Roy’s eyes widen and then narrow, grip tightening on the back of his neck. Fuck, he’s mad now, and Ed’s thrilled, grinds their hips together again to urge Roy on. 

“The fact that you’re indispensable is the reason I can’t do this,” Roy finally rasps, hand at Ed’s hip to still him. 

“But you’re so bad at _not_ doing it,” Ed points out, because he hadn’t been the one to start this. He’d just offered the possibility, over and over, the faintest hint for someone who would have to already be looking.

“I know!” Roy shouts, and then winces and closes his eyes. His thumb is caressing the soft skin behind Ed’s ear absently. It’s the only part of his body that Ed can feel for the next ten seconds. 

“Hey,” Ed says, and his grin softens to something less mean, something more teasing. “I hear you.”

That gets a startled laugh, and Roy sits up fully, catching Ed by the small of his back to keep him from toppling off, Ed’s legs wrapped around his waist. 

“I don’t get why you’re so guilty,” Ed says, and he doesn’t let Roy talk, ignoring the incredulous look on his face. “Save it for shit that matters. Or at the least for _later._ I want this. You want this. Let’s have it.”

Roy looks like he wants to say something and frowns, staring at Ed’s lips. Ed takes the distraction as the opening he needs and rolls their hips together. Roy makes a sound high in the back of his throat and Ed does it again, this time with Roy meeting him. 

“I really think—” Roy starts, but his voice is strangled, aroused, and scandalized all at once. He shuts up when Ed slides his hands under his shirt, yelping at the cold of the automail.

“Yeah, fucking stop it, does nothing but get you into trouble,” Ed says. “You wake up every day and think of how to destroy your life in some new and interesting treasonous way, I’m not letting you do _mine_ too.”

“I _am_ doing yours,” Roy moans. It’s not a sexy moan. More of a misery-moan. 

“You’re fucking obnoxious,” Ed decides, and that’s absolutely enough talking. Talking was a mistake. He _knew_ talking about your feelings was just some kind of massive racket run by therapists. Last time _he_ asks for something in the bedroom, careful what you _fucking wish for._

They’re kissing again, which is good. Kissing is way better than talking, or writing letters. Roy’s good with his tongue, seems to know when to pull back and doesn’t spit too much. He does a thing where he sucks on Ed’s and laughs directly into Ed’s mouth when he makes a squeaky nose, doing it again. 

“Mmppff,” Ed tries, but then Roy rolls them over and Ed burns up and dies all over again. He’s petitioning to have his name changed to ‘Phoenix’ tomorrow. He’s having the last name changed anyways. Edward Phoenix Elric-Rockbell, it has a fabulous ring to it. Al’s gonna be so jealous that he has a more badass middle name than him. 

Wait. Do they have middle names? 

What’s on their birth certificates? Has he ever seen their birth certificates? Are they—

“Ed,” Roy gasps, kneeing his thighs apart. He’s sweating and red faced, hair sticking to his skin. “Something interesting I’m missing out on?” 

“Am I an illegal immigrant?” Ed asks dizzily. 

“What?” Roy asks.

“Nothing,” Ed says quickly.

Roy laughs again, and that’s like, three fucking laughs already. That’s more than the bastard’s probably laughed in his entire _life_ , and it’s all for _him._ Damn, he’s good. He has a career in stand up comedy if this whole ‘alchemical genius’ thing doesn’t pan out. 

They keep kissing, and sliding and grinding and moaning, and it’s fucking sweltering. Ed stops kissing Roy for just a moment to grab at the hem of his own shirt, but two thin hands grab at his wrists and hold him in place. There’s a shocky moment where he freezes and he shivers, eyes unfocusing, before he realizes— it’s to stop him stripping. Not just to, to hold.

It’s a testament to how turned on he is that he just goes “huh?” and wrinkles his nose at Roy in confusion. 

Roy, who looks like he just killed a puppy. 

“Oh, fuck, _no_ ,” Ed moans, pulling at Roy’s grip. Roy grimaces, and it doesn’t quite look right with his red face and deep panting. “Are you trying to kill me? Are you fucking trying to _kill me?”_

“Edward,” he whispers, and then painfully quiet, “sweetheart. We _can’t_.” 

Ed stares at him, and the shocky feeling is back, but worse, and so are the shakes, but they’re the kind that happen before he beats the shit out of something. Bad shakes, bad _shakes._

He feels— is it stupid, to feel cheated? Out of something that wasn’t his, was never his, was never going to be? He’d just thought it was going to be, for a moment. Cheated out of a dream, halfway through. It feels a lot like that, actually, except he felt awake when he was kissing Roy and now he feels like he woke up into a nightmare. 

“What the fuck,” he says, faintly. The rest of the words clutter up his throat, stick in it, too many to say at once, too many for him to know if he wants to say them.

It’s delicate, the way that Roy lets go of him. He slides back, gives Ed room to get up, and sits on the end of the bed with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. 

He doesn’t _get_ to look miserable, and Ed’s automail fingers curl into his palm of his own accord. 

Ed gets up. He stands by the edge of his bed, and shakes, feeling like his chest is caving in and being ripped apart simultaneously. 

“Tell me not to go,” he demands. He shouldn’t give Roy any more chances. He’ll only throw them back in Ed’s face, and they’re sharp as knives, sharp as broken glass.

Roy’s pressing his thumbs into his eyes, shoulders hunched and spine bowed. His shirt’s all wrinkled from Ed’s body, the top three buttons undone. 

“You can’t do this,” he whispers again, brokenly. 

“I fucking hate you,” Ed chokes out, and he’s never meant anything more, he’s never been so glad that Roy won’t know what that means, and then he...not runs. He can’t run. He can’t even move quickly. But he does move, towards the door, and then out the door, unable to stop himself from pausing in the entryway, waiting. Hoping. 

Another chance. 

“I’m sorry,” comes from the emptiness behind him, and fuck if he didn’t call it. It only hurts. 

He wants to go to Winry’s room, of course. But he can’t. That’s— he can’t ask his fiance to console his _broken heart_ over someone else. That’s, she said she was okay, but _he’s_ not okay, and this was a fucking mistake. Everything about this, everything he’d thought, everything he’d thought he was getting, and he’d _asked,_ he’d asked if Roy was okay with this when it would have— it would have hurt to stop, but he would have been. It would have been. 

“Apology not fucking accepted,” he informs Roy, and slams the door behind him.

***

There’s nowhere else to fucking sleep. The farmhouse is packed, and if he sleeps outside he’ll get eaten alive by mosquitoes and be itching all through the service, and also he’s not a fucking child and isn’t gonna run away from Mustang being an asshole even if it does feel like he’s pulling his insides out with a hook. 

Mustang’s pretending to be asleep while sitting up, his back against the wall and one knee up against his chest. Ed remembers the soldiers on the Briggs wall, can almost imagine a rifle leaning companionably against his side. 

What a fuckhead.

If Mustang tries to kiss him again, he wants to say he’ll punch him. He is. Not certain that he’ll punch him. Because he’s weak, and hates himself. 

“Fucking turn over, you giant bitch,” Ed says. “I’m laying down in thirty seconds whether or not you’ve moved, and my automail is _heavy._ ” 

Mustang doesn’t even crack an eye as he smoothly lays down, nose pressed against the wall and back to Ed. That’s more fucking like it. Ed bundles himself up in the only blanket, makes sure there’s at least an inch between them, and turns so that he’s facing the door. 

“I kick,” Ed says, because if he doesn’t say it now then Roy might think it’s because he’s getting fucking special treatment or something and make a big deal about it. 

He deserves ‘special treatment’ via kicks. But it won’t be on purpose, and Ed doesn’t think it’ll be as hard as he theoretically could kick if it _was_ on purpose, and he’s not having those weak ass sleep kicks on record as the best he can do.

Mustang doesn’t answer, doesn’t even twitch.

Well. Fine.

It’s not like he wanted him to answer, anyways. Not like he wants to fight with him. 

“You’re an asshole,” Ed says. 

No answer.

Ed closes his eyes, and stuffs the edge of his pillowcase in his mouth to keep from saying anything else. He can have the argument in his head just fine, if Mustang’s gonna be such a huge fucking twat about it. 

His eyes start dripping, and he has to drop the pillowcase out of his mouth then, so he can breathe in shallow and slow through his mouth. It’s fine. It’s fine. He’s cried in the dark silently plenty of times, and Mustang won’t know, won’t know if he does it right.

Mustang rolls over and wraps Ed into his arms, tucking his chin over the top of Ed’s head. He strokes a little at the back of his neck. His arms shudder where they’re caging Ed in, and for some reason it makes it hurt worse, to know that. 

He should elbow him in the gut. He should. 

Instead he just keeps breathing, that too shallow, too slow, not fooling anyone melody. The sound fills his ears, until he can almost pretend he can’t hear Roy doing the same thing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to kotosk and the other Russians in the royed server for the ‘Drachman’ joke!

“So you’re a Colonel,” Babushka says. She and Granny are both smoking at the breakfast table-- well, the two picnic tables they’ve pulled together outside on the front lawn to make enough sitting room for everyone to eat breakfast. Tables for breakfast, breakfast table, it’s all the same. The weather’s nice this early, warm but not hot, even if the atmosphere between most of the guests is downright chilly. 

Winry’s been keeping a careful eye on Ed, since he came down. He looks like he was hit by a train last night. And not the good kind. 

He sits down next to her, plate piled with eggs and pastry and every kind of meat on offer. His automail hand finds hers under the table and squeezes. She squeezes back. His dexterity is improving well, and so is his pressure sensitivity. 

“I have been in the past,” Roy says. Winry thinks he’s some level of General now, but at least he’s a _polite_ one. He also looks like he’s been hit by a bad train. He’s sitting at the opposite end of the tables, as far from her and Ed as he can get. He’s not looking at them. Ed is looking nowhere _but_ him. Winry shares a commiserating glance with Riza, and then turns back to her plate.

“We have a good joke,” Boris pipes up. Babushka grins. 

“Do you?” Roy asks. It’s dry, and more than a little dismissive. Winry takes back her _polite_ judgement.

“We do.” He leans in, expression serious. “So, two soldiers are chatting with each other. One says, ‘did you hear that the Colonel’s library burned down?’ The other one nods, says ‘It sure is a shame, he never even got the chance to finish coloring the second book in.’” 

There’s a beat where all Winry can hear is chewing and cutlery, and then Ed _screams_ with laughter. Winry nearly falls out of her seat.

It’s not nice laughter. It’s not even _genuine_ laughter. 

But it is… loud?

“Oh man,” says Ed, wiping tears from his eyes. Winry has the deep suspicion that they were there before he started laughing. “Do another. Do another.”

Roy is drinking his orange juice with the grim determination of a man being tortured. The Drachmans look pleased, if slightly off put by the… _noise..._ that just came out of Ed. Winry’s kind of put off herself.

“Yes,” Boris agrees, and he tilts his head towards Ed but is clearly still aiming for Roy. “You know, we have a saying? ‘Those who served in the military do not laugh in the circus.’” 

“Why?” Winry asks, curiosity piqued. “Because the military is a joke?” Granny snorts sort of proudly, and Boris’ smile turns mean. 

“No,” Roy interrupts. “It’s because once you’ve been in the military, they murder your ability to laugh.” 

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Ed says, and Winry doesn’t like that smile on his face, pinches at the inside of his arm, a silent _be nice or else._ He ignores it. “Maybe you just need an Amestrian joke. Hey, Boris, what’s the difference between a serial killer, a state alchemist, and an arsonist?” 

“Ed,” Winry hisses, and pinches him harder. He doesn’t even move away. She’s almost bruising him, and she stops.

“One can’t be convicted!” Ed says with a flourish and a smile.

Polina laughs, sharp and light, and Boris joins her almost immediately after, as if it took a moment for the joke to land. It’s cruel, and she’s not sure if they understand it or if that’s exactly _why_ they find it funny, but she feels a little sick and more than a little offended on Roy’s behalf. 

What the fuck, Ed. 

“What the fuck, Ed,” she whispers. 

Roy stands up, chair falling over backwards behind him. It clonks him in the thighs, but he doesn’t even flinch. “Excuse me,” he says in a tight voice, and walks into the house.

Riza takes another bite of her pancakes. “Nice day out,” she says. Her eyes are sharp.

“YEAH,” Ed agrees, loudly. Very loudly. He picks up a sausage on his fork and then just stares at it, like he’s forgotten what to do next. “NICE DAY. WONDERFUL DAY FOR A WEDDING.”

Winry gets up less explosively. She grabs Ed’s plate too, because he needs to be punished, and he doesn’t even try and stop her as she storms into the house after Roy. 

She doesn’t follow him as he climbs the stairs, instead veering off and into the kitchen to replace all of Ed’s meat with fruit. She gives it all to Den, who’s looking up at her with adoring eyes and a gently lolling tongue, unfazed by her anger. 

And she is angry. What the fuck, Ed! That’s-- whatever happened between him and Roy, she doesn’t want to know. She’s sure of it, even now. But there’s airing dirty laundry in public, and then there’s finding someone’s weak spot and driving a knife into it when they’re not expecting it. What he did was wrong. _Cruel._ Ed’s not—he’s not supposed to be _cruel_ , he’s supposed to be her fiance and the father of her child and— 

Not vindictive. Not a bully. 

Ed’s been watching her angrily scrape food at Den. She knows he’s there, can hear his automail and his breathing that’s just a little too rough. 

“I’m…” he says, and then doesn’t finish. Like he’d started to apologize and then couldn’t get the words out.

“I can ask him to leave,” she offers. Den’s licking at her fingers now, looking for more food. “I don’t want you to-- to be like this. Because I pushed you.” 

Ed laughs, and it’s raw, high, a bit hysterical. “Win. This isn’t. It’s not because of you pushing me, okay? Just. He’s a fucking asshole. We were both wrong. I shouldn’t have said that though. I— I don’t think I can be. Alone with him to apologize. Right now. But I shouldn’t have...it doesn’t matter what he did. I’ll try to fuck up less, okay? No need to make a scene kicking him out.”

Winry turns, and the kitchen is small. Always has been, and it makes it easy to reach for him and pull him close, his face tucked against her neck and his hand on her belly, the sap. 

“Are we getting married today?” she asks him. There’s a creak at the top of the stairs just as she finishes speaking, someone stepping on the wrong part of the top step, and she tries to pretend she doesn’t see Roy. How long has he been standing there?

Ed shrugs, and she hears the smile in his voice turn soft, warm. “I said it was a beautiful day for a wedding, didn’t I?” She knows she has him, then. She knows he’s hers, and she smiles, and pretends not to notice the shadow on the stairs as it disappears. 

***

Ed’s _marrying Winry, okay?_

And it’s going to be a beautiful goddamn wedding.

***

“Hey, fucknuts!” comes a shout from the front lawn. Winry and Ed both pause where they’re cleaning up the mess from the breakfast buffet, tense for different reasons. 

“I thought you said you couldn’t get an answer out of her?” Ed asks, and Winry shrugs, wide eyed. 

“I got many _conflicting_ answers out of her,” Winry says.

“I found something of yours!” is the only warning they have before a metal arm goes sailing through the door, open to let the summer breeze aerate the house. It crashes against the sitting room couch. 

It’s also not theirs. 

“Did you steal someone’s fucking arm?” Ed yells out at Paninya. “Did you just give us a _stolen limb_ for our wedding gift?!"

“Get me drunk and maybe I’ll tell ya,” she winks as she rounds the corner. She looks. Oh, hell, she looks good. Her hair’s been sheared completely off and she’s pierced all over; ears, nose, lips, eyebrows, cheeks. Probably other places, too, and Winry’s eyes drop to the black tank Paninya’s wearing. 

Ed nudges her, whispers in her ear _too loud, way too loud_. “Want your freebie, yet?”

She elbows him in his liver. Hard. 

“I’m a modern man! You have two hands!” he says, _TOO LOUD, WAY TOO LOUD,_ and then runs out of the room. It’s a good call. 

Winry grabs the arm off the floor, throws it after him, clipping his foot so he stumbles. “I HAVE THREE NOW, ACTUALLY, AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT!”

Paninya grins, opens her arms, and says, “Hey, Winnie. Miss me?”

Things keep getting more complicated, don’t they?

***

Sig and Izumi arrive right on time, with huge coolers full of barbequed and roasted meat dishes for the reception. Winry had figured the at cost discount they got was their wedding gift, but they also plop down a shiny wrapped box on the kitchen table. Ed is drawn to it like a moth to a flame, rattling it and trying to guess its contents. 

“It’s a book,” he finally declares, and then frowns at it like that will tell him what _kind_ of book. 

“Sex tips,” Al says confidently. Ed goes bright red and turns on him, getting ready to screech. Al plops a box down on the table. “I hope she didn’t get the same book I did…”

“I’m going to kill you,” Ed says. He looks like he’s going to pass out. “Never say that, that _word,_ in relation to Teacher, ever again.”

“You’re right, it’s very unlikely,” Al says, cheering up visibly. “Ling helped me pick out my presents.”

“Ling,” Ed says, and he grasps backwards for a chair as his knees give out. Winry helpfully kicks it a little further under his ass, because he wasn’t aiming very well. “Ling. Helped.”

Polina walks into the room, sees the shiny box on the table, and frowns at Ed’s shell shocked reaction. “Gift, that is customary, yes?” she asks. 

“Yes,” Winry says. 

“Good,” Polina says, and walks out again. 

“Was that suspicious?” Ed asks. “Should I be suspicious of that? Fuck. She makes me so nervous. I am. Having a nervous breakdown.” He hangs his head between his knees, and Winry sets a hand between his shoulder blades, rubs briskly.

“An automail leg is no excuse for cold feet,” Al says sternly, wagging his finger. 

Winry chokes on her own spit, just in time for Riza to walk into the room. Wonderful, just wonderful, Winry’s never looked more attractive. She’s holding a pile of dishes from the breakfast table outside, and breezes past them to stick them in the sink. Izumi follows after her with the rest.

“Come with me,” Izumi says, and Winry assumed she’s talking to Ed and Al exclusively, but Ed grabs her wrist and she’s going with them, apparently. Izumi doesn’t say anything, and neither does Sig, who plants a shovel sized hand against Al’s shoulder and guides him out the door. Winry is faintly shocked the kitchen could hold all of them, and all of _Sig,_ who is roughly the same size as Al was in the armor.

“We’ll be back, I guess,” Al says to Riza, who glances at them in recognition, and Winry wants to crawl out of her own skin for leaving a _guest_ to clean up _alone._

Riza rolls up her sleeves — _forearms_ — and winks at Winry, which sends her scurrying out ahead of everyone else. 

Izumi’s got a basket on her arm, and Ed relaxes as they walk and slides his hand from his wrist to Winry’s palm, threading his automail fingers between hers. He usually avoids touching people with the automail hand. Except her. With her, he makes a point to touch her as much as possible, and yeah it’s a --sex thing, a _little,_ \-- but mostly she just loves him. He takes the basket from Izumi wordlessly. 

Ed’s always so careful with her. That’s why he doesn’t trust himself to touch other people with it — he’s so distractible, so emotional. But with her, he’s always acutely aware. Acutely careful. It’s— 

She sniffles a little. Fuck, she’s so happy she’s marrying him. She’s even happier that he agreed to let her put the ring on the _right_ hand, after the wedding. 

If she’d hoped to stop crying she’s going to be disappointed, because they make to keep walking towards the fields but Sig takes a sharp right on a mostly destroyed fork in the dirt road. There’s only one thing down that way, rocks and tufts of desert grass and little veins of greenery marking the path, and it all leads to a patch of land where the Elric home used to stand.

Winry had wanted a fall wedding, when she was a kid. She liked the crisp of the air, the apple harvest, the crunch of the leaves, the color pallete. But it’s all a bit too close to October 3rd, no matter what time of fall she picks. 

Winry peeks at Izumi, surprised that she’d bring them here, so close to the ceremony, but she has a furrow between her eyes that’s identical to Ed’s. Is it cruel to wonder who he learned it from, her or Trisha?

“Several years ago now,” Izumi says, and crosses her arms, plants her feet wide. “I expelled you.” 

Sig reaches into his pocket, and pulls out the silver package. The one that _had_ been on the kitchen table, that he must have grabbed before they left the house. 

“It’s so pretty,” Al breathes, staring at the patch of greenery where their foundation has long since decayed. There are weeds and flowers in purple and white, and Winry remembers with a flash of vividness that only comes from sense memory that Trisha used to wear a purple dress with a white apron all the time. 

Izumi’s eyes go soft with affection, but Ed elbows Al in the side and hisses, “Al! Teacher’s saying something.” He’s tense, laser focused. Winry feels— superfluous. An observer. 

“It’s alright,” Izumi says, and Winry notices for the first time that her crossed arms aren’t aggressive, that they’re holding her stomach. That there’s lines of pain by her eyes. 

“Mrs. Curtis,” Winry says, gently. She can’t help the way her own hand flutters over her stomach, but she changes direction and brushes off her shirt, not wanting to bring attention to the baby growing in her, not after what Izumi lost. 

She probably wasn’t supposed to know about that. Ed almost _certainly_ shouldn’t have told her.

Izumi knows about the baby, of course. Izumi probably knows about the things Ed’s told her. But her eyes are warm where they’re looking at Al, and they don’t change their shape at all when they meet Winry’s. 

“Al made a good point. It is pretty here,” Izumi says. She takes a deep breath, gathers herself. “A few years ago, I expelled you. I was… hasty.” 

“You were right,” Al says. “We broke your rules.” Ed’s hand tightens in Winry’s. 

Izumi clicks her tongue at him. “I was cruel. That you think you deserved it only shows that the world was cruel to you as well.”

“We _did_ ,” Ed mutters, looking at his boots, “We--”

Izumi slides her sandal half off her foot, where Ed can see it, a silent threat. Winry snorts, despite the serious atmosphere. Ed shuts up. 

“You had more than graduated,” Izumi says. “You were ready to be journeymen, except you were two little boys, and I… I couldn’t let you go.”

She takes another steadying breath, and Sig puts one of his hands to her back, lets it support her. “Let’s sit down,” he says. It’s not a suggestion, and Izumi sags against him the same that Ed sags against her, and Winry sees the parallels and realizes that nobody’s reaching out for Al, so she pulls him close too. 

It’s strange, how alchemists seem to need so much more support than they’ll ever ask for. Self sufficiency as a smokescreen.

Sig throws out a blanket perfectly on the first try, and holds Izumi’s hand as she slips off her shoes and sits down. Winry follows, and grabs Ed and Al so that they stay tucked close, like when they were kids. She feels young, being here, even if there’s nothing familiar about it. 

“You will be my only students,” Izumi says solemnly. “And you will be my only heirs.”

Al flushes a deep red, eyes welling with tears. He covers his face but doesn’t make a sound.

Ed gets angry. “What is that supposed to mean? You giving up that fucking easy, Teacher?” He claps a hand over his mouth, appalled at his own language. Winry doesn’t think she’s ever seen him do that. 

“Are you-- Teacher, are you d-dying?” Al hiccups, and Izumi looks stricken. Sig sighs the sigh of a man who knows he can’t change things. 

“Boys, I’m always dying,” she says, but her voice is tight with tears. “I’ve been dying since before you knew me. But that’s not what this is about.” 

Al’s scrubbing at his face, chin trembling. He’s breathing too fast and Winry places her hand on his arm, and he clutches it with both of his like a lifeline. 

“And no, Ed, I’m not giving up. I don’t want any more students. Two little orphaned punks were enough stress for one lifetime,” she says with a watery smile. “What I’m going to do is give you your proper inheritance, as my s-students.”

“Your sons,” Winry corrects, and then smacks her hand over her mouth. She feels all the blood drain out of her face, and Ed’s looking at her like he’s been slapped. “I’m, I’m so sorry, I completely--”

“Shut up, she doesn’t _want_ us—” Ed starts.

“Edward,” Sig booms, and everyone jumps, even Izumi. She places her hand on her chest in a way that’s delicate, and that’s for some reason more striking to Winry that the emotion she can see shimmering in her normally stony gaze. “She’s _only_ ever wanted you. Both of you.”

“But,” Ed says, and his eyes are filling with tears, his face filling with the strange blush he gets when he’s angry-sad. “But you both, you _both,_ we were there! For years. And you never _said._ If you wanted us, you would have said. We left, we left so we wouldn’t—”

“Be a burden anymore,” Al says softly. He’s shaking against Winry’s side. “We were burdens on you. You were sick, and needed to rest, and instead you were always teaching us, and playing with us, and-- oh.” He looks at Sig with wonderment. “We’re very stupid.”

“You were kids,” Sig tells him. “Your little worlds were only so big. Of course he couldn’t see into ours.”

“No!” Ed yells. “Even if we were _stupid,_ I didn’t need to, to _kill another Mom!”_

“Oh my god,” Winry says, and Ed flinches, and Izumi’s lips have gone pale with shock. 

“We don’t need to talk about this,” Ed says, quieter, shoulders hunched in on himself. “We just, it’s a nice day. I’m sorry. What was, what’s our present.” He says ‘present’ with a layer of self disgust that’s a branded Elric trait, and Izumi leans over and whaps him upside the head. 

“We do need to talk about this, but not today. Today’s about you-- all of you.” She looks at Winry, and to her belly. “It’s about your new family, the one you and Al have made for yourselves, not the family you might have had.”

“I wish,” Al says. He doesn’t continue, watching his hands, his face a mirror of Ed’s in their resignation and upset. Everyone waits. Everyone always waits for Al. “Teacher, you know that it’s your family too? If you want it?” 

“Don’t make our mistakes,” Izumi tells Winry. She doesn’t move to touch her but she’s watching her, making sure that she understands. “Don’t make _my_ mistakes. It’s your job to take care of your baby, or any that will wander into your life. It doesn’t matter if you think you deserve them-- they deserve you. You can _never_ give up. _Ever._ Stake your claim and fight for them.”

“You didn’t give up,” Winry tells her. “Look at them.” 

She shakes their shoulders where her arms are wrapped around them, expressively. They look a right mess, really, snotty noses and flushed faces. But they look whole. They look alive. They look like they’re feeling things, which wouldn’t be a point to celebrate if it hadn’t taken so long to train Ed into not grimly grinning and bearing it.

Al giggles. “Teacher,” he says wetly, “You literally fought for us, too. With your _feet._ And Sig fought! I didn’t know he could even do that!” 

Izumi’s nose wrinkles, and she ignores Al. God, she really is like Ed, ignoring all the nice things and trying to get on with her self flagellation and ultimate goal in a conversation.

Sig places a meaty hand on her head and shoves her. “The kid has a point,” he says, and she narrows her eyes at him. 

“He usually does,” she mutters. “He’s an awful little brat like that.”

“Ed,” Sig says again, and Ed flinches. Sig opens his arms. 

Ed stays where he is. “No,” he says wetly, petulantly. “M’not a baby.” 

Winry sighs, takes her arm out from around Al, and _shoves._ Ed somehow wasn’t expecting the extremely predictable betrayal, and falls face first and sputtering into Sig’s barrel chest. Al pounces on after him, planting his face in Edward’s back and blowing his nose on his shirt.

“You should quit acting like one,” Winry advises Ed, and stretches out in her now luxuriously large bit of the blanket. She meets Izumi’s eyes, and smiles shyly. Izumi, after a startled moment, smiles back.

“What’s in the basket?” Ed sniffles.

“Food,” Sig rumbles.

Ed sobs a little. “My _favorite._ ”

“You missed breakfast, tearing that military dog a new one,” Izumi says drly. “We thought you might be hungry.”

Al pulls off of Ed’s back. It’s gooey, and frankly disgusting to watch. “I’m gonna open the present if no one else does,” he threatens. Ed stiffens up, but doesn’t move from Sig’s arms. Izumi makes a little _go ahead_ gesture, and Al tears in.

It’s a simple looking pair of notebooks, stacked on top of each other. Leather bound, nice but not expensive, clearly worn with use, a flamel engraved on their covers. Al sucks in a sharp breath and his hands turn as gentle as if he was holding a newborn. 

“Teacher,” he says in a strangled voice. 

“Oh,” Ed says, and his voice is raw, his eyes wide as he turns to Izumi. “You.” He stops, breathless, motionless. “You?” 

“Me,” Izumi confirms, and she begins to cry in earnest. Ed hits her like a very huggy battering ram, burying his face in his shoulder, pinning her arms to her sides in his hurry. 

“There’s also Cretan salami,” Sig says. 

Ed starts wailing, then. “THAT’S MY FAVORITE.”

Izumi shushes him, hands twitching uselessly, head bowed over his. Her black braids mingle with Ed’s chaotic blonde tangle. “I know,” she chokes out. “I know.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hm. This hurtie.

“Everyone here knows that Ed is very special to me,” Al says. 

“Gross,” Ed mutters into his plate, where he’s slouched in preparation for the oncoming humiliation. He can’t even enjoy the lamb. Al’s going to murder him in public at his reception. He’s only starting nice because he has an image to maintain, Ed _knows_ it.

Winry pats his shoulder sympathetically, and then just lets her hand sit there, playing with the embroidering on his vest absently.

“Everyone here _also_ knows that he’s an idiot,” Al smiles. “I have had the dubious honor of seeing multiple proposals to Winry, but since this is their wedding, I’ll tell you about the one that was so bad she decided to marry me instead.”

“There’s still time!” Paninya calls, and there’s a smattering of laughter around the picnic tables. They’re outside, because it’s Resembool and everything is outside, the heat just heavy enough to cling cotton to sticky skin but not to create an unbearable heat trap. There’s the whole town scattered about in alchemized little tents, picnic tables covered in tablecloths and flowers and food. God, the _food_ , it’s _right there._

“She couldn’t afford to keep me in the lifestyle I’ve become accustomed to,” Al says, shaking his head sadly. 

“I could so!” Winry protests. “I’m the one with a job!”

Close friends and family are the closest, of course. His table is facing everyone else’s, which he hates, and directly in front of him are Izumi and Sig and Granny, who’s smoking something that Babushka brought her. Babushka’s sitting to Granny’s right, and the other Drachman’s to _her_ right, a place of honor despite nobody knowing who the fuck they are. 

“Impressing Xingese royalty into giving him shit is his job,” Ed says. If he slouches a little bit more he can probably sneak some of the cold cuts on his plate without anyone noticing. 

“Excuse me, this is _my_ toast,” Al says, and then talks over Ed’s protests that it’s _his_ wedding. “So we’re all outside, and it’s hot. I think it must have been the hottest summer ever, and Winry and me are too tired to even get off the porch. Ed though, _Ed_ decides that it’s the perfect day to go exploring.”

Winry pinches him under the table, right above his automail scarring on his knee port, and he’s forced to straighten up before she’ll let go. He grabs her hand as she pulls it away and shoots her a grin, ha, she wasn’t expecting _that._ He intertwines their fingers and mouths ‘I win” at her blush. 

“Eventually, I start to get worried. Ed’s been gone a really long time, and this wasn’t long after our mom passed, so I was a bit clingy. Winry—” 

“-- _Was_ ,” Ed says, and Winry pinches his palm this time. 

“-- and I remember this verbatim, said ‘let him die, he deserves it’, when I tried to get her to go look.” 

“Regrets, do I have them,” she sighs under her breath just for Ed, soothing his palm with her thumb. 

“So I go look for my brother. It doesn’t take long, because while he was just out of earshot of the porch, I can hear him screaming and crying and cussing as soon as I’ve started into the woods,” Al laughs. “I um, I learned some new words that day.”

Ed opens his mouth and Al barrels on before Ed can recite them.

“I _run_ towards him, and I fall a couple times, even skin my knees, but I keep going. And when I finally find him, he’s just— tangled in this briar bush from the knees down. In his hands, he’s got a bunch of the roses, and he’s,” Al laughs. “He’s bleeding _so much._ But he won’t put them down!

More laughter, and Ed tries to cover his face with his hand but Winry’s got a death grip on it and the other one’s holding the stem of the wine glass, the way he’s supposed to before the toast, the _traitors_. 

“I try and get him out, which takes a while, and he explains that he’s making a flower crown for Winry. She uh, she’d been really not— not thrilled with the doll we made her out of alchemy, and brother was _insisting_ this was the only way to make it up to her. She had this book, her favorite book, and it had a Princess on it with roses in her tiara.”

Al starts rummaging around under the tablecloth and Ed and Winry both mutter simultaneous “oh no’s.” He straightens, and he has a _beautiful_ red rose circlet in his hands, each flower peak color and health, not a single wrinkle or brown spot or fucking thorn in sight. 

“Al,” Ed says, “If you propose to Winry _at my wedding--”_

“Winry hated the crown Ed made her,” Al says, and rotates the one in his hands. “He’d left all the thorns in, and he was snotty and gross when he gave it to her. But it made her happy, anyways, to see that he’d worked that hard for her. Which is why, for my wedding gift—”

Al places the crown on Ed’s head. “Ed is really special to me,” he finishes. “Which is why I’ll finally help him give her a good one.”

Winry’s staring at him with that look in her eyes she gets sometimes when it’s dark and they’re naked and Ed’s made a sound--

“Hhhh pretty man,” she whispers, and Ed _blacks out._

But only for like a second. 

“Holy shit Al,” Ed says, and takes the crown off, looks at him. At the crown. At Winry. 

“I still think my proposal was better,” Al says. “Everyone had pants on at the time.”

The guests break out in raucous laughter and wolf whistles, which just goes to show that most haven’t heard the story. Ed takes the opportunity given to him to place the circlet on Winry’s head delicately, and there’s a moment where despite the eyes on them, the decorum, the stifling expectation, it’s just. Them. And Winry’s smiling, warm and small and secret, and it makes him giggle and she giggles cause _he_ did, and he squeezes her nose just cause it’ll ruin the mood and he loves ruining Winry’s moods. 

“I’ll drink to Ed keeping his pants on!” Paninya yells, and then does so. 

“To Ed keeping his pants on!” Al toasts, and downs his drink.

Winry winks at him, and doesn’t touch her glass. It’s really. Hot outside. 

They do the couples toast, them and anyone else who’s married or dating, arms twisted to tip each-other’s glasses to their partner’s lips. Any other time he would spill it on purpose, but even _he_ recognizes that now’s not the time. Winry takes a small sip and Ed downs his, and from her periphery he sees Izumi and Sig doing the same. He wonders if Hawkeye and Mustang are, and doesn’t look. 

Paninya stands and starts waxing poetic about how beautiful and perfect Winry is. She’s sober, because she doesn’t drink on principal and also because it’d kill her with her percentage of artificial, and only a handful of people understand the implication to the glimmer in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks. She holds Winry’s gaze the whole time, and Winry holds Ed’s hand under the table for longer. She ends her toast with a good natured threat that they make each other happy _or else_ , and everyone drinks to it.

Then Granny grunts and climbs onto her chair. For anyone else it would be demeaning, but for her it demands attention, and the low murmuring quiets without instruction. 

“Pipsqueak,” she starts, and Ed screeches, “WHO YOU CALLING AN UNCOOKED PIECE OF RICE TOO SMALL TO PICK UP WITH CHOPSTICKS!” because some traditions are just as important as others.

“SHRIMP!”

“SHRUNKEN OLD HAG!”

“GRANDSON!” Pinako yells, and wins. Ed falls silent, and feels his eyes start to burn a little. No. He’s not crying over this. She’s barely said anything yet.

“I’ve known the Elrics for a long time,” Pinako says. “I introduced their parents, and I gave a toast at their wedding too.”

“How old _are you?”_ Ed asks.

“Older than you’ll live to be, you reckless boy,” Pinako snaps. She clears her throat. “Now, what I said at their wedding was different, and so was what I said at my son’s wedding. I’m too old to be making hour long speeches about how proud I am, so you’re going to have just take it on faith.”

“I can’t believe you’d bring up faith at my wedding,” Ed whispers. Winry snorts, but elbows him silent.

“Winry, you know that I love you. And I cannot be any happier than I am to see how happy you are, with your idiot. I married an idiot too. Love him as long as you have him, and never be afraid to tell him you’re smarter than he is.” Granny gives a watery smile with her old leathery dinosaur face. “I will always be so proud of you, my apprentice, my granddaughter, and you have grown into a beautiful and strong woman. You are every inch the best of what your mother and father were.”

Winry’s lip does the thing where it wobbles and Ed clutches at her knee frantically, squeezing with his automail hand and begging her silently not to cry. 

“Ed, please start putting your socks in the laundry hampers, and not on the floors. You’re going to be a great father someday, and it starts with that.” Granny says solemnly. Winry laughs, startled and teary.

“Never,” he hisses, just to get another wet giggle from her. It does, and he feels such adoration for her that it rushes him and leaves him dizzy. 

“To a long and happy life. May you get everything you need, and enough of what you want,” Granny says, raising her full glass of moonshine, and then tips it back.

The Drachmans shout something that Granny repeats, and tip theirs back too, and then everyone’s shouting and drinking and rushing around to get to the food and the lamb that’s been roasting all day in honor or their pure matrimony, ain’t tradition just _cute._

Ed lets his eyes cast over the crowd, idly, and in doing so he forgets where he’s not looking. Riza has a pinched look on her face, like she’s been sucking on a lemon, and Roy is smiling bright and empty of meaning as a light bulb at her. 

Food. Food food food. Food is good, will absolutely fill this empty hole in him, which is absolutely due to hunger and not— what else would it be! Haha! This is, this is food related. This is hunger, clearly, desperate and clawing and painful and cramping, and good thing there’s a fucking _buffet_ just waiting for him to decimate it. 

***

“I’m too full to dance,” Ed groans. “Just leave me here. I’m not important.”

“You’re right,” Winry says, “ _I’m_ the important one, and I want you to dance. Up!” 

“I’ll dance with you,” Al offers as Winry tugs at Ed. “I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be the other woman.”

“Shut _up,_ ” Ed says, but gets to his feet. He’s pretty sure he’s sloshing. Can they hear that?

“The only reason I’m doing this is because I’m taller than you,” Ed says, and Winry gives him a blank look as she straightens her posture and. Looks down at him. 

“SINCE WHEN CAN YOU DO THAT?” Ed screeches. And then. “HEELS ARE CHEATING, WINRY.”

She smiles slow and takes his automail hand, tugging him towards the part of the field that’s had the grass stomped down for dancing.

“Sounds like a man who didn’t think to wear heels to his wedding.”

“We’re the same shoe size,” Ed threatens. 

“Oh, absolutely,” Winry breathes, and Al about-faces and leaves. 

Ed’s uh, Ed’s seeing his wedding night laid out in front of him, and y’know what? It sounds pretty fucking good. He can. He can deal with some dancing.

The dancing is. Really good, actually. 

He twirls Winry faster and faster around the field, into and out of his arms. This is the dance where the men are supposed to get him a pig’s nose without getting caught, palming it between each other until it’s in Ed’s hand. If he can get it before the end of the dance it means he and Winry’ll have a baby before the next summer. Traditions are weird. Why not a lamb’s nose, if the lamb roast is so important to their matrimony? The whole town goes in to buy one and everything, and other than this dance there’s not a thing about pigs in the whole ceremony, not even the weirdly secular ones. 

The music becomes frantic, the crescendo building, and there’s still no paper mache pig’s nose in his hand, and then he’s dipping Winry deep and low, both of them gasping for breath. 

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Riza’s voice says, and Ed and Winry straighten. She’s standing on the sidelines of the dance, holding up the pig’s nose in confusion.

“Get my wife pregnant,” Ed calls.

“Hmm,” Riza says, and then attaches it to her face with the elastic.

“Hnnn,” Winry says, and it sounds a lot like the noise she made earlier. He gives her an offended look. 

“Win, it’s not even _day two_ and you’re lusting after other women. What do I gotta do here, keep my hair down? Wear makeup?” 

“Ohmygod Ed stop or it’s gonna get real embarrassing real fast,” she says, patting his chest. “I can lust a little. It’s my wedding too.”

“That’s very not correct,” Ed says, and then the music starts again, a square dance, and Winry laughs bright and loud in excitement as she steps into line with the women. She gives Candace a short compliment as they’re lining up, one Ed can barely hear, and then laughs again at the look on his face.

The Drachmans and Roy’s unit stand by and watch the locals, save for Havoc. There’s a lot of cheering and clapping and hooting, and it’s fun, colors streaking across his vision, warm hands on his arm, laughing in his ear and hair whipping in his face. He makes it back to Winry and even though they’re in the middle of the dance he gives into impulse and tips her, kissing her hard, and her hands grip his collar instead of push him away. He pours all of the _light_ and _warm_ and _yes_ into her, and she gives it right back and he’s so, so. 

Happy. 

***

“You got us a puppy?” Ed says. 

“Yes,” Polina says. “Why do you think we did not spend more time with you?”

Honestly, he thought it was because they were trying to be sly about how they were paying the local kids to run contraband into the cities via Resembool station, but Ed’s not gonna say anything about lining the pockets of his impoverished town. Especially when it means more headaches for the military. 

Ed stares at the dog. It’s… large for a puppy. Very large. “And you’re sure it’s not done growing?”

“It is guard dog!” Boris booms. “Traditional Drachman gift to new couple!”

Ed looks at Winry, who looks at him, and then down at the dog.

“IS THAT A PUPPERS?” Al screams from twenty feet away before charging forward, and the puppy charges back at him as far as her leash will let it.

Well. Guess they got another dog now.

“We should name her…” Winry says, and then trails off. 

“We’ll name her _tomorrow,”_ Ed decides.

“That is not a very good name for a dog,” Polina tells him. “I hope you are better at naming babies.” 

“Oh, he won’t be naming the babies,” Winry says easily.

“Babies?” Ed asks, enunciating the ‘s’. Al’s making out with the puppy, and he can’t look away. It’s. Cute? Horrifying? 

“Not one of them,” Winry says, and pats him sympathetically. “That dog is two minutes from being named Skulldeath.”

“Wow, you _are_ meant for me,” Ed perks up, “love of my _life_ , knows me better than I know myself, _of course_ Skulldeath is an--” the pat turns into a slap. 

“Alphonse is a wonderful name for a baby,” Al says, for the fifth time since he’s come home. “It’s unisex, too.”

“Is it?” Polina asks, looking intrigued.

“No!” Winry says, throwing her hands up. Polina frowns at Al.

Ed is… probably too drunk for these conversations. 

“Time to introduce guard to town,” Polina says. That sounds like people, and talking, and touching and. Ed’s breathing really fast. 

“You go take a break,” Winry whispers into his ear. “Don’t want you to wear out before _I_ get to wear you out, kay?”

“KNNNNNNNFFFF,” Ed says, like a teakettle, and turns on his heel. 

There’s not a lot nearby. That’d been on purpose, to avoid the night devolving into drunken debauchery. There’s not even privacy trees. What there is, is a barn. But it’s pretty far aside.

He’s not actually sure who the barn belongs to. They’ve never seen anyone in it, although it’s always cleaned with fresh hay. Ghost barn, maybe. With ghost...animals. 

For all he knows, it was his _dad’s_ barn, and he paid two decades in advance on it like he did on everything else when he left.

Now he’s sour, stomping into the barn and wishing he brought a flask of water. Stupid bastard and his money and irresponsibility. He throws himself onto a convenient hay bale and gets ready for a good sulk in the quiet.

Which is of course when he hears the distinctive sound of someone gulping out of a bottle, and looks over to see that the someone is fucking—

“What the fuck?” Ed asks, because it really sums his stance up on the discovery.

Roy looks like shit. His face is pale and drawn, eyes waxy and distant. He glances at Ed and takes another swig from the bottle in hand, and it’s not even one he recognizes. Drachman? 

You can’t swig that shit. That’ll _kill you._ Ed tells himself that’s why he stands, stomps towards him.

“Fate’s a cruel mistress,” Roy slurs. Ed sees red. 

“What the _fuck_ does fate have to do with your shitty fucked up choices, Roy?” he snarls. He rips the bottle out of his hands.

“I’m. A cruel.” He huffs. “Cruel mistress. Is me.” He looks down, and realizes that the bottle is gone and gives Ed a stink face.

Ed’s gonna kill him. “You’re not anyone’s fucking _mistress_ , you _asshole_.”

“Hm,” Roy says, and it’s so fucking-- condescending, the _bastard_ , like he knows better than Ed, like he’s not sitting drunk and pathetic in a barn at Ed’s fucking _wedding._

“HOW DARE YOU,” Ed shouts. He’s stabbing Roy in the chest with his finger. Roy looks sadly at it and licks his lips, but doesn’t otherwise react. God, he’s never seen him look like this. Well, he has, back before, when he’d drop by at 3am in the hopes that nobody would witness him submitting his reports in order to keep his reputation as a badass rule breaker. And Roy would be at his desk, drinking and. Looking exactly like this. 

“I always,” Roy says with the wandering philosophical tone of the very maudlin drunk. “I always seem to end up at weddings for other people. Like Maes. And you. Isn’t that, isn’t that strange?” 

“Don’t you dare,” Ed hisses. “What, did you tell Maes no too?”

“Don’t,” Roy says, and there’s weight to his voice now, fuel to Ed’s fury.

“Don’t what? Bring up bad fucking memories? You’re a walking _flashback.”_

Roy stands at that, and there’s more of him present now behind the washed out mask. “You think I don’t know that?” He asks, and it’s raw. It makes _Ed_ raw, and fuck if he’s gonna let him get away with that. 

“I think every time you say sorry you do it by burning a different problem into someone,” Ed says. _Hit me. Hit me. I can’t have you, but I can have this,_ hit _me._

“Shut up,” Roy warns him, fists clenched. “I’m here because you _asked_ me to be, Edward. I’m, I’m,” he chokes on his own spit and coughs into his arm before wiping his mouth with his hand. He’s wearing his gloves, even now. They don’t match his suit. 

“Oh, we’re talkin’ bout things I asked for now?” Ed says mockingly. “Thought I wasn’t allowed to ruin my life. Maybe you should’ve just said _no,_ it’s like, your favorite fucking word. Except you don’t say no, do you? You tell _me_ to say no, and then when I don’t stop it where you want--”

“I don’t want it to stop!” Roy roars. It echoes within the wooden walls, loud as Ed’s ever heard him. “I want _you!”_

“Then you should have said _yes!”_ Ed yells back. “You fucker! It’s too, it’s too—” 

Roy grabs him by his shoulders and drags him in, something angry lost in the way their mouths crash together, snarling and wet and good. Ed tries to pull away and Roy kisses him harder, with teeth, and Ed-- pushes back. 

Pushes into him, wraps his arms around his neck and arches his spine into Roy’s body, and every nerve is alight and they’re gasping, tongues and spit and desperation. Roy’s hands migrate to Ed’s hair and ass and Ed melts, and moans, and Roy echoes it.

Roy slips a knee between Ed’s thighs and Ed bites his bottom lip hard for the intrusion, even as he grinds against it, it’s _good_ and Roy knows, plays his body like an intstrument and Ed fucking sings for him. 

They haven’t exactly been quiet, and the barn is pretty far off from the party, but someone might come to check on the yelling. And there’s— that thought— the party. Win’s party. Because it’s her _wedding._

He shoves away, staggers back, body thrumming and alive and electric.

“Late,” Ed gasps out, betrayed. His fists clench, and he’s still burning up, and there’s nowhere for it to go, and he’s so angry, he’s so angry, he’s so—

He punches him in the face. The impact hurts, he’s not fully lost, he pulled it a bit and used his flesh arm, but if he can’t fuck him then he’s gonna fight him, and Roy’s clearly not gonna start it. In for a — ha, for _520 —_ cen, in for a fistfight.

“You’re too LATE!” he screams. 

“No,” Roy argues, and wipes the blood from his lip and he’s so smug, and sad, and wishful and knowing and it’s not fair that Ed can see all of that, can see the way Roy shuffles through his emotions like masks. 

“I hate you,” Ed snarls, because he knows Roy won’t understand it.

Roy grabs his face and they’re kissing again, this time there’s blood and that’s familiar and comforting, like warm milk when you’ve had a bad dream. Ed’s used to it, and he licks it off of Roy’s tongue and Roy moans, low, against Ed’s chest.

“I hate you,” Ed gasps out, and this time Roy might even understand it, “You fucker, you absolute shit, I hate you.”

“I love you,” Roy admits, and Ed just. Fucking decks him, again. Roy doesn’t take it this time, catching his wrist, and Ed turns into the momentum and gets him with his automail elbow instead. He’d feel bad but the fucker literally forced his hand. 

“I’m tired of being too late,” Roy rasps, and grabs Ed’s ponytail and pulls him away from where he’s trying to bite Roy. Ed snarls and stomps on Roy’s foot with his automail heel, forcing him to let go. 

“You shoulda thought of that earlier,” Ed chokes out. He’s too angry to cry, but he’s pretty sure if he wasn’t blinded by fury he’d be blinded by tears. _I love you._ What the fuck gives him, gives him the _right,_ the right to fucking — “You’re always fucking here, you, do you ever get sick? Of kicking me when I’m down? Huh?”

“You’re such a fucking hypocrite!” Roy explodes, and he’s still slurring, his eyes hazy. “You dangle yourself in front of me and when I give in, I give in because it’s you and you get _married_ \--”

“I wasn’t married last night!” Ed yells back, and he’s — why is this not, clear? He knows Winry went into the bathroom with him, and then when Roy kissed him that night, he had to _know_ , he doesn’t know why it has to be— 

“You-- you don’t _get it_ you’re such a-- a _child_!” Roy shouts back. “That’s not how this _works!”_

Ed’s body does this thing where it gets very cold, and then very hot, and then very cold again. He thinks, with such a clear voice that it almost scares him, _I’m going to kill him._

“I’m going to kill you,” Ed says, in that clear voice. He’s still frozen. _Child, child, child._

“Good luck,” Roy mutters. 

“Appreciated,” Ed says, and then kicks his legs out from under him in one swift sweep of his steel leg, straddles his chest while he’s still frozen and pulls a fist back, and Roy, eyes wide—

_snaps._

“YOU FUCKING MORON,” Ed shrieks, orange igniting around them. 

The fucking alcohol, it was on the floor, it was on the _hay,_ he scrambles off of Roy and towards the door.

There’s a flash of terror-- masks, masks-- before Roy scrambles up and rushes Ed, arm along his back to guide him out, like he’s trying to fucking, protect him or some shit.

“PULL THE OXYGEN OUT,” Ed yells. 

“I’M DRUNK,” Roy yells back, and frantically snaps again. 

The fire is spreading, the whole room is alight behind them.

Ed rambles off the equation, _Roy’s own_ damn equation, and Roy snaps again, the fire dimming.

“Again, again, you _fucker,”_ Ed says. 

“I’m drunk,” Roy reminds him, and he’s clutching Ed’s hand in his. 

“Not everything can be excused by _I’m drunk,_ you fucking, decrepit alcoholic—” Ed says increasingly frantically. He doesn’t even know who’s goddamn barn this is. He recites the fucking equation again. 

Roy snaps, and the barn doesn’t change but there’s smoke in his nose and-- ok, yeah. Their suits were on fire and now they’re. Not. That’s good. Roy’s still holding his hand, and he snaps again and finally, fucking _finally_ the fire smolders. 

“Ed!” Al yells, and Ed rips his hand out of Roy’s like it’s burning him. Which it almost did, ha. Al’s not close enough to see, is panting by the time he reaches them, coughing at the smoke. “Was the _barn on fire?”_

“I’m drunk,” Roy explains, and then turns down the path Al just rushed from and wanders away. 

“I’m going to kill him,” Ed says thoughtfully, already starting after him, but Al grabs his arm. 

“Brother,” he chastises. “It’s time for the last dance. Winry sent me to get you. You can kill the Colonel—”

“Brigadier General,” Ed corrects automatically. 

“-- _later._ ” Al stares at the barn, which is still… smoking. Slightly. “So he was...drunk?”

“I’m going to kill _myself,”_ Ed says, and starts back towards the wedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> END NOTES:
> 
> “You should give a toast,” Riza says quietly. 
> 
> “Oh, Ed’s already heard as much from me as he wants to,” Roy says darkly.
> 
> “What does that—oh, you _didn’t,”_ Riza says in the tone of voice that says very clearly that she knows he did. “For fuck’s sake, Roy.”
> 
> “I have no idea what you’re implying or inferring,” Roy says, smiling at her with the teeth he can bother to bring to the occasion. 

**Author's Note:**

> find ang3lba3 on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/cryingiscooltm)


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